Socialism has never worked
Socialism has failed everywhere and every time it’s been tried. Yet somehow this zombie won’t die.
Bernie Sanders has reignited socialism’s siren call of economic justice for all. Utopians of various flavors — young people, academics, and diehard progressives — have risen to the bait.
This populist surge leaves one wondering if these folks know the difference between a centrally planned economy — socialism — or a market economy with more social safety net programs than we have today. Sen. Sanders advocates the former as does Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In “Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism,” Joshua Muravchik documents socialism’s many failures over the last 200 years.
Socialism’s original benefactor was Welshman Robert Owen, founding New Harmony, Indiana in 1825 to demonstrate his “social system.” He extolled its virtues to a joint session of Congress that included President James Monroe. But despite exhausting his personal fortune on the dream, New Harmony fell apart in two years amid disarray and backbiting.
Owen’s son reversed the experiment by giving every citizen their own plot of land: A market economy saved the community.
Undeterred, dozens of other frontier communities adopted socialist principles. Despite the best of intentions, every one of them failed within a few years.
Voluntary socialism didn’t work, so utopians who knew what was good for us turned to government-imposed socialism.
Karl Marx decried capitalism’s exploitation of workers and described what he called “scientific socialism.” Socialist political parties sprang up all over Europe in the late 1800s. Their goal: governments where workers held all economic power.
But Marx’s description of capitalism’s fatal inconsistencies fell apart. Workers’ wages and working conditions steadily improved into the 20th century. Instead of disappearing, the middle class grew steadily.
Nonetheless, socialism’s utopian precepts found fertile ground in more economically backward countries, especially Eastern Europe. Vladimir Lenin’s communist revolution set the stage for a socialist experiment on a grand scale.
Billed as representing workers and overthrowing the capitalist bourgeoisie, communism instead enriched party leaders while spreading to the rest what Winston Churchill called “the equal sharing of misery.” Hundreds of millions died in the USSR, in China, and elsewhere where socialism was imposed by force.
Bowing to economic reality, both Russia and China have allowed varying degrees of private enterprise to revitalize moribund economies.
Recoiling from autocratic communist socialism, so-called democratic socialists came to prominence in Europe in the last half of the 20th century. While falling short of socialism’s standard of complete government ownership of the means of production and distribution, they implemented a heavy dose of government economic control.
Today’s American democratic socialists regularly tout the Scandinavian countries as exemplifying their ideals. So how has socialism fared there?
In short, Scandinavia has abandoned socialism. Finding that their industries became uncompetitive in the export markets they relied on, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark lifted the heavy hand of government control in the 1990s.
Disputing Bernie Sanders’ claim, Denmark’s prime minister states clearly, “Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.” Danish economists agree.
Instead of hamstringing their economies with excessive taxation and regulation, Scandinavians have embraced the marketplace, supplementing it with a generous social safety net.
For example, all three Scandinavian countries have reduced corporate tax rates to the low 20 percent range. If that rate sounds familiar, our new 21 percent corporate tax rate makes us competitive with them. Scandinavian companies are flourishing in world markets.
American socialists might have cited Israel, but it abandoned its failed socialist experiment in 1985. Today’s only true socialist countries are Venezuela and Cuba. They are the very models championed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez without apology.
Dispute this claim? Read the Green New Deal.
Take your pick: Sanders’ massive central planning bureaucracy directing the economy and “relieving” you of making decisions about which products to buy and which services to use, or a market economy where you and millions of others make your own decisions from among competing vendors.
I’ll take a market economy’s bounty over socialism’s “free stuff.”
Mice die in mouse traps because they don’t understand why the cheese is free.
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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Looking forward to America moving hard left so people like you can keep spouting nonsensical crap like this for my enjoyment. Thanks for the laugh, Howard.
Howard. Another entertaining opinion piece.
I note here one of your key, but apparently incomplete paragraphs:
“For example, all three Scandinavian countries have reduced corporate tax rates to the low 20 percent range. If that rate sounds familiar, our new 21 percent corporate tax rate makes us competitive with them. Scandinavian companies are flourishing in world markets.”
I am wondering if you forgot to finish it? Shouldn’t there be another sentence starting with “US companies are…?
Howie, if you knew more about macro economics and the way currency is created and regulated, you would be able to see beyond the false left/right paradigm and see the truth; that all of the different “isms” like capitalism, socialism, communism, etc., are just distractions to keep you from seeing the real “ism” the world still runs on. Feudalism. There is a very small group of powerful people that own the vast majority of the earth’s wealth. They control most of the major corporations, almost all governments and the crooked shills that pretend to run them, most of the land and natural resources and most of the other influential organizations of the world. Stop supporting them by spreading their propaganda and helping to keep the public divided and confused.
I agree with Neil lol