Still Clueless After All These Years

In 1984, as all devoted readers of Conversations with Trentino know, John Kenneth Galbraith visited the Soviet Union and praised it for the prosperity he saw in its "exfoliating apartment houses" well stocked stores, and traffic-filled streets. Professor Galbraith took particular note of labor efficiency: he observed that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics used its manpower efficiently, unlike the US.

Galbraith was then the grand panjandrum of economics, a professor of that dark science at Harvard, erstwhile president of the American Economic Association, a founding member of the ADA, and formerly US Ambassador to India. A card-carrying liberal in excellent standing, he had by then committed two highly praised, magnificently absurd books for the general public—The Liberal Hour and The Affluent Society.

Galbraith's picture, c. 1984, was false, a total crock, bearing no resemblance to the actual economic condition of the Soviet Union. But he charmed the pants off the editors of the New Yorker magazine who published his nonsense apparently without assistance from their celebrated fact checkers. Understandable, of course, because Galbraith was cherished in Lefty circles as a certified public intellectual.

In the light of his accomplishments and position and his doubtless abundant intelligence, how was it possible for Galbraith, the archetypical Liberal Leftist, to make and publish such dreary dreck?

The simplest and best answer to this question is: Galbraith's mistaken judgment proceeds from his Liberal/Lefty orientation, that is, from his "anti-Capitalist mentality" as Mises terms it.

It is this anti-Capitalist impulse that drives the Left and makes it Left. It is the reason they find in capitalism's character what Thomas Frank calls "borderline criminal." It is the reason that Peter Beinart is looking for a decent Left. It is the reason for George Lakoff's strangely perverse recitation of Lefty "moral values." It is the reason every Lefty deems greed to be the energizing element of capitalism.

You hear, greed is the engine that drives capitalism. It is the lack of greed—"incentives," they sometimes call it—that accounts for socialism's failure to produce.

Greed performs no function whatever in a market-oriented society. It produces not a dime of revenue for individuals or for the great associations of individuals known as corporations. It plays no part in an earnings statement, is not accounted an asset on the balance sheet.

Greed, however defined, is a human personal characteristic. The notion that it disappears in the command societies of socialism is baseless, goofy. Yet it is that baseless notion which accounts for the suffocating smugness of dedicated socialists—anti-Capitalists—and makes them continually pound their chests and bellow their moral superiority over us common clods.

It is this same baseless notion that sets the post-Stalin anti-Capitalist crowd to cheering such socialist paradises as Mao's China, Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam and Castro's prison island.

The corollary to the capitalism-is-greed notion is that the United States is insufficiently socialist, hence, that it is evil. Ask Michael Moore if you don't believe me.

Next up, The Conning Tower will consider anti-Capitalist claim that market ordered societies are "unfair." Stay tuned.

The corollary to the capitalism-is-greed notion is that the United States is insufficiently socialist

Exactly. What do Socialists need to solve all the world's problems? Obviously, power and money.

In order to obtain power, they need to hand out money.

Without Capitalists and Capitalism, where would Socialists and Socialism get its money?

Two stories about the Soviet Union before the collapse bear repeating. Both stories occurred around 1984, and impressively refute Prof. Galbraith.

This story appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (evidently their editors were asleep at the wheel and missed the implications) and I repeat it from memory.

Three wives of professional hockey players were in a supermarket in Canada. One of the wives was a recent defector from the USSR, she had come with her husband, who had also defected from the USSR to play in the NHL. The Russian wife saw all the meat at the meat counter and immediately started grabbing all of it while telling the other two wives to grab some meat, too, because it wouldn't be there tomorrow. The other wives had trouble convincing the Russian wife there would be meat again at the supermarket the next day.

My note: And this would have been the wife of a person who was privileged in the old USSE!!

The other story was told by an actor on the old Arsenio Hall show.

The actor had been to the USSR to work on a film. One item he related about his experience in the USSR was this: The one thing you could count on in the USSR was that nothing would work.

The other problem he had was with McDonald's being introduced to the USSR. He was absolutely appalled that McDonald's was the first introduction to western style capitalism for people in the Soviet Union. However, he was quite surprised, when he arrived in the USSR, at the block long lines at the MacDonald's. And, as the actor said, McDonald's was on the expensive side for the average Russian. Finally, he asked someone in line why they were willing to wait so long and pay so much for MacDonald's.

The answer was somewhat illuminating: "Because it is the only place in Russia where you are assured that when you get to the end of the line, what you've been waiting for will be there."

My note: I forget the name of the actor.

Have any of those pea-brained "intellectuals" ever taken notice of the fact that socialism has demonstrably failed to produce the promised result in every nation and society in which it has been tried? Did they all somehow miss the fact that the US has become the richest and most powerful nation in the history of planet Earth due to it's capitalistic free enterprise system?

Those questions bring yet another question to mind, why are those people considered to be intellectuals when they are obviously clueless in their own field of endeavor?

Because socialism is a faith, a secular faith, of course, not an intellectual activity.

The one thing certified intellectuals of the socialist faith do not do is question their shopworn creed, a creed that blinds them to facts.

They can't face up to the repeated failure of socialism, so they make do by asserting their supposed moral superiority.

They fail at that, too.

"It is this same baseless notion that sets the post-Stalin anti-Capitalist crowd to cheering such socialist paradises as Mao's China, Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam and Castro's prison island."

If socialism were a viable system, it would have worked by now. The issue isn't can it work or should it be tried again. The issue is how many people can the left sell on the fantasy of socialism.

Communism or socialism (which are both the same thing) always have been and always will be the veneer that shrouds the true intent of those selling this false system. The purpose is to create a situation where the masses transfer their political power to the state in exchange for the false promises of socialism. The result in every case has been the same: a small nucleus of thugs gets control, creates a thugocracy as in Cuba or North Korea and the people get shafted.

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