Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism

Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism, Encounter Books | 2002 | Jason Muravchik

[Noumenon]

For those wondering why so many are attracted to socialism, This excerpt from the epilogue of Jason Muravchik's book goes a long way towards explaining it.

For the vast majority of its adherents, the socialist creed is a free lunch, a free ride, and a chance to feel superior to the rest of those not so 'enlightened.' Redemption and salvation on the cheap.

For the elite, it represents the ideal Ponzi scheme dedicated to the establishment and maintenance of their control and management of the human cattle upon whom they feed.

[Davis]

Another wonderful essay on this subject by one of our own...
http://www.atrentino.com/Mene.html

[harpseal]

For the vast majority of its adherents, the socialist creed is a free lunch, a free ride, and a chance to feel superior to the rest of those not so 'enlightened.' Redemption and salvation on the cheap.

For the elite, it represents the ideal Ponzi scheme dedicated to the establishment and maintenance of their control and management of the human cattle upon whom they feed.

For the new recruits from the insitutions of higher learning it promises membership in that ruling elite. If you will membership in a new class of nobility with even more rights and privledges than a medevil lord.

[Noumenon]

Just so. The death-worshippers of socialism have a lot in common with the death-worshippers of Islam. They're every bit as fanatic, and they're every bit as committed to total and utter domination of mankind. A difference of style, not substance.

The present is a whole lot like a drift down the river towards Niagra falls. It's pretty peaceful, maybe a few bumps here and there. But there's a long drop and hell to pay up ahead. What's that rumble I hear in the distance?


BTW, it should be _Joshua_ Muravchik, not Jason. My bad.

[yankeedame]

For the new recruits from the insitutions of higher learning it promises membership in that...elite

Oh, shades of John Knox!

[Noumenon]

Betty - here's that Muravchik piece I promised. Jeff - some insight and intellectual ammo for your daughter. Lurk - you'll appreciate this.

[Southack]

No, people are attracted to socialism only because it promises something for nothing.

Get your free welfare. Get your free drugs. Get your free house. Never get fired. Always get a raise no matter if you worked hard or not at all. Get your free education. get your free highways. Get your free dams and bridges.

To get all of these "free" things, you just have to think that it's always OK to have the State compell people how to behave. Want to start a business? Get permission from the state. Want to sell something? Set your price at the State-mandated level (e.g. taxicabs). Want to import or export something? get permission from the state. Want to travel somewhere? Get permission from the state.

Of course, over time Socialism ALWAYS controls more than just the behavior required to supply all of the "free things". Soon the all-powerful Socialistic government is mandating whether you can smoke or not, where you can smoke or not, if you can do drugs or not, if you can drink alcohol or not, when you can shop, when you can have a "sale", how many children you can have, how many homes you can own/build, what you can say, what you can write, whether you can be armed or not, what you can wear, who you can associate with, etc.

[LiteKeeper]

bump

[45Auto]

Socialism, in contrast, lacks any internal code of conduct to limit what its believers might do.

Which is why it is a very dangerous disease. And why it appeals to the young, the indolent, the criminal, and the demonRAT. All these groups have one thing in common: they don't want any code that might tell them how to live. Curiously, they want to install a government code that tells us all how to live. Socialism and its 'milder' counterpart, liberalism, have a lot in common with certain mental disorders, like schizophrenia.

[Noumenon]

To be sure, Marxism contained no gods or angels, yet it had its own mystical elements. It claimed that human behavior was determined by abstract, exterior forces: people do what they do not for the reasons they think, but because of the mode and the means of production and the class structure. To compound the mystery, Marx and Engels did not believe that the forces they described governed their own actions, but they did not explain why they were exempt.

Being a liberal/socialist/fascist means never having to say you're sorry.

Before Marx, Robert Owen always characterized his activities as scientific (as did Saint Simon, Fourier and the other utopian socialists), and the claim was valid. Owen hit upon the idea of socialism and then set about to test it by creating experimental communities. Such experimentation is the very essence of the scientific method. Owen strayed from science only at he point that he chose to ignore his results rather than reconsider his hypothesis.

Being a liberal/socialist/fascist means never having to say you're wrong.

These two items alone tell you that there's no accommodation, no compromise, no 'can't we all just get along' possible with these monsters.

[Free Vulcan]

Excellent

[Question_Assumptions]

That last paragraph, alone, is worth the price of the book. I've posted it several times here.

[Question_Assumptions]

By the way, I strongly recommend Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Annointed, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, and A Conflict of Visions. The three show an evolution of Sowell's ideas along very similar themes. You should find them interesting. The last one is particularly excellent if you want to understand the utopian leftist mindset.

[Southack]

"There are a million and one arguments against socialism, but here's the trick: any solution that doesn't address the original desire that drove people to socialism (read: "gauranteed minimum standard of living", "stable society", or even the very basic "no starvation or exploitation of the masses") is going to meet with resistance."

Your logic is based upon the premise that a more socialistic society is a more stable society, yet that is hardly what we see in reality.

North Korea is incontravertably more socialistic than is the U.S., yet to maintain "stability" in North Korea requires the massive daily intervention of the police state.

Cuba's "stability" is so fragile that it FORBIDS competition to any elected office. Sure, the people can vote, but they only get to vote for the officially annointed candidate. And Cuba is clearly more Socialistic than is the U.S. or even Canada.

The Soviet Socialistic Union [Soyuz] Republic, known in Cyryllic as the CCCP and in English as the USSR, was likewise more socialistic than was the U.S., and was demonstrably less stable.

In sum, your premise appears to be flawed based upon the known examples of socialism that are available to us.

In fact, one could make a very strong case that the more a society tends towards socialism, the less stable it becomes.

Sure, a social "safety net" initially makes good sense, until said safety net becomes abused to the point where the participants are better off remaining in the safety net than if they returned to the work force (when/if able). Moreover, that direct-cash-payment safety net may make less sense than a community "poor farm" or "poor house" (or not, collectivism seems to fail everywhere it is tried).

Worse, the net effect of any large-scale transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor invariably manages to remove investment capital from the most productive members of society - in favor of transferring said capital to the least productive members of society, a recipe that by definition means "lower productivity" for society at large.

And when society at large has lower productivity, it means that all boats are sinking, not rising (a trend that invariably leads away from prosperity).

That is socialism. It sounds good initially. It feels good while its happening. It might even look good at first, and then history kicks in to reveal that socialism leads to declining productivity/wealth.

Cubans drive the SAME cars today that they stole from Americans in the 1950's, for instance. North Koreans don't even drive. That's not 21st Century wealth, that's medieval poverty.

And that is the endgame of socialism. In the end, it redistributes not wealth, but poverty (and everyone "feels good" on the ride down).

[Noumenon]

Yep, I've got all of Sowell's books that you've mentioned. Arguably one of America's great thinkers. His Culture trio is also excellent and worthwhile. Sorrythat I hadn't noticed your previous postings of Muravchik's work - and I agree - that last paragraph alone IS worth the price of the book. Muravshik really intrigued me with the notion that only in the last few millenia has mankind's religious outlook included a moral dimension, incorporating a moral code. This is the common thread running through all the world's great religious and philosophical systems. Another common thread is mankind's propensity for manipulating that moral code for their own ends.

At the end of the day, the essential nature of the conflict remains the same. It's the millienia-old struggle between those who believe that they have the right to dictate the terms of existence to eveyone else, and those of us who believe that no such right exists. Once again, that struggle is coming to a head, another watershed of human history. What's at stake is more than most of care to recognize - the potential for a fall of humanity into a thousand years or more of slaughter, slavery, brutality and darkness that'll make the worst of the Dark Ages seem tame.

[John Valentine]

Your writing itself shows why fighitng against socialist "thought" is so frustrating.

You start right out positing the concept of a "stable society". Poppycock! Such a thing has never existed in the history of the world and every attempt to create such a thing will result in the imposition of tyranny.

Why?

Because someone (and there will be no shortage of do-gooders willing to volunteer their superior moral viewpoint to this task) will have to define this "stable society" and start regulating the others in order to create it.

You can be certain that the regulators will always make certain that the regulated support the regulators in fine style; after all, they are doing such important work.

You can see how this develops. we have been tiptoing down this path since the 1930's and show little sign yet that we shall change course.

Especially as long as there are poeple out there still imagining that a "stable society" is a goal worth pursuing.

[Travis McGee]

Did you get lost on your way over to www.leninlovers.com?