Posted on 03/09/2019 3:56:41 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
In the 1970s, my Dad flew from his home in Pennsylvania to a medical center in Houston to have a then-innovative bypass surgery that extended his life by more than three decades. At the same time, my wife's family was sending bottles of aspirin to their relatives in the Polish socialist paradise. That dichotomy—Americans receiving cutting-edge medical care even as Eastern Europeans were lacking the rudimentary medicines—always stuck in my mind as I've written about political systems.
To understand socialism, one needn't fixate on its most-horrifying elements—gulags, executions and endless repression. Think about the simple stuff.
After Boris Yeltsin joined the Soviet Politburo in 1989, he visited Johnson Space Center and stopped in a typical Texas grocery store. "When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people," he later wrote. At the time, Russians waited in line for whatever crumbs the bureaucrats would sell them.
Why are pundits and politicians talking about socialism again, 28 years after the fall of the Soviet Union? Donald Trump's vow that the United States would never become a socialist country got people talking. Good for him, even if he should stop praising and excusing North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who runs a communist dystopia often described as the "the world's biggest open prison camp."
The real reason for the renewed discussion, however, comes from politicians on the other side of the spectrum. It's apparently hip to be a socialist now, even among contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination. A year before Yeltsin's U.S. visit, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took a strange trip to the Soviet Union. A video of the shirtless then-Burlington, Vt., mayor singing with his Soviet hosts as part of a sister-city event has gone viral. That was ages ago. What bothers me is what he—and others on the Democratic Left—have said more recently.
In an article headlined, "Sanders could face more scrutiny for socialist leanings," The Washington Post referred to the 2016 primary debate between Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Sanders was asked by the moderator in Miami—a city filled with people who fled Cuban communism—about seemingly positive things he had said about Fidel Castro and Nicaragua's socialist strongman Daniel Ortega. "The key issue here was whether the United States should go around overthrowing small Latin American countries," Sanders said. That was a transparent dodge. One can oppose American military intervention without having a soft spot for dictators.
These days, some progressives describe themselves as "democratic socialists," which makes the idea sound kinder and gentler. They aren't thinking about crumbling buildings in Cuba, starving children in Venezuela and genocide in Cambodia, but might be envisioning a facsimile of Portland, Ore.,—a place with cool, fair-trade, vegan restaurants and hip bars, but without all that private ownership stuff. Yet socialistic policies could turn the nicest cities into wastelands.
Apparently, the leaders in those bad socialist places didn't do socialism right. As a former Barack Obama national security adviser told the Post, "I think the challenge for Bernie is just going to be differentiating his brand of social democratic policies from the corrupt turn—and authoritarian turn—socialism took in parts of Latin America."
A turn? Authoritarianism is the inevitable outcome—a feature of socialistic systems, not a bug, because those systems empower government at the expense of individuals. On its website, the Democratic Socialists of America say they "believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically—to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few." They don't offer many specifics, but perhaps your tenants will vote on the rent until you decide to leave the apartment business. These "new" socialists seem as utopian as the old ones. DSA notes that, "a long-term goal of socialism is to eliminate all but the most enjoyable kinds of labor." Until work is fun, though, someone must divvy up unpleasant tasks on a more equitable basis. You've been warned.
Despite air-conditioned homes, full bellies and consumer gadgets courtesy of capitalism, some Americans yearn for a socialist paradise. We can cross one off the list. In 2013, Salon published a piece about the Venezuelan leader's "full-throated advocacy of socialism and redistributionism" titled, "Hugo Chavez's Economic Miracle."
Four years later (with a different strongman but same policies), the BBC described that miracle: "Despite being an oil-rich country, Venezuela is facing record levels of child malnutrition as it experiences severe shortages of food and an inflation rate of over 700 percent."
Maybe Venezuelans didn't do it right. Nor did the Russians, or anybody else. Or maybe socialism is a fundamentally flawed idea that always leads to misery by design. We shouldn't need this discussion in 2019, given mounds of evidence and victims, but here we are again.
But-but-but it is because the WRONG PEOPLE end up running the socialist system, doncha know. If they just get in the RIGHT people, this time it will work for sure.
Oddly, even with the “right people”, socialism ends up being a command-and-control economy. Complete with “re-education camps”, rationing and chronic shortages in even the basic needs.
Eventually socialism runs out of other people’s money.
Socialism is something you vote your way into and shoot your way out.
NH never really answered his own question. It is basically flawed human nature. Humans are stupid, stubborn, and fail to learn from history. Read Chronicles. a history lesson for everyone. Despite what God did for the Israelites, they kept forgetting and rebelled time after time.
I don’t know why we debate it at all as it’s unconstitutional. We are guaranteed a Republican form of Government.
The problems of socialism and communism, have frequently been blamed on people just not doing things properly.
Having seen so many historic examples of the faults of socialism and communism, from Lenin and Stalin to chairman Mao and Pol Pot and Castro, we are supposed to believe, that these good communists just didn’t implement the theories of Marx and Engels properly.
And we are also supposed to believe that people such as Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez will do it right this time.
I always say “apply this proposal to the filter of your life”
Excellent point.
It’s true. There’s nothing to discuss.
Shortages and dictatorship?
The liberals point to Scandinavia, but those countries aren’t socialist. They are wealthy due to capitalism.
This battle will indeed be worth escalating. And it will be escalated should the socialists cheat their way into power.
I would hope and trust that we’ve still got the revolutionary spirit. No way should we let people with an unfailing history of failure have control of my life, my family, and our future.
I promise every reader that those that create wealth and jobs already have plans to go away if socialism becomes our way of life. Like Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, there will be a strike of the producers and then it’s over for a couple of generations.
>I don’t know why we debate it at all as it’s unconstitutional. We are guaranteed a Republican form of Government.
“A Republic. If you can keep it.” - B. Franklin
Cause we didn’t hang all the socialists after the last debate?
Socialism is nothing more than the Wicked Witch’s Candy Cottage in the Hansel and Gretel story.
Eat the candy at your own peril.
The success of capitalism feeds the socialist impulse. People see all the wealth created and start thinking it's infinite. They wonder why they don't have more of it and start dreaming of all the uses government can put it to.
The money isn't infinite. It runs out soon enough. But socialists aren't thinking that far ahead.
The appeal of socialism is free stuff without effort. It’s already demonstrably failing in our big cities. The message is “come here and get lots of free stuff.” The only requirement is to be homeless, which is easy for those who wish to put forth no effort. Think about it; the only requirement is to have virtually nothing. That’s the incentive. We reward those who have nothing because they don’t want to be productive. There’s a formula for prosperity.
Let me fix that:
Or maybe socialism is a fundamentally flawed idea that always leads to misery by short-sighted, incompetent, ignorant, and the obvious inability of incomplete centralized-planned design because no person or potential committe can foresee demand for every required product or every sudden disaster that may arise in production of every product to guarantee to meet the needs of the population in every situation and location in the future.
The sheer arrogance that makes socialists assume they can plan and adequately meet the disparate needs of millions of people, much less their desires and demands, guarantees their societies and economies will fail because they have no concept of the problem they think they are tackling and why every attempt at socialism has been an abysmal bloody failure in short order.
Is there anywhere in the world socialism or communism has worked? I’m scratching my head.
We aren’t guaranteed shit. “Unconstitutional” is whatever five justices on the Supreme Court say it is.
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