A Libertarian’s Response to a Socialist’s Apologetic

A Libertarian’s Response to a Socialist’s Apologetic
By Nathan Barton © 2009

November 30, 2009

What is socialism'
Thursday, May 11, 2006
By: Tanya Chase
Part of a series on the fundamentals of Marxism

A friend and I recently realized we needed to know how to define socialism, so I went to a source assumed to be expert, and found exactly the article which would answer my question. Or so I thought. After reading it, I realized that I just had to respond, and use this opportunity to answer the question myself. In the following dialogue, Miss Chase’s words are indented and italicized, and my responses are in plain text.

But I don’t think Miss Chase will like the answer.

The United States is the wealthiest country in the world. Its Gross National Product is $12 trillion. Yet 45 million people in the United States live without health insurance. Some 33.6 million people are food insecure or hungry. Over 3 million people experience homelessness each year in the United States, 39 percent of them children. One out of every five children is born into poverty. That number soars to one out of two for the African American community.

Only socialists say “people claim” that the United States is a utopia. Of course it has problems, but those problems must be compared to the rest of the world, and to other systems besides a mixed-market economy. In reading this, I am amused by how much this socialist propaganda is like the Democratic Party/Obama Administration/ Obama-Reid-Pelosi Triumvirate propaganda (or is it the other way around'). While the number “45 million” without health care insurance has been disproved time and again, let us accept it for the sake of argument – and see that it is meaningless. Health care insurance is NOT the same as health care, and doing without the insurance does not mean that you do without the care – for millions of Americans this is not a problem. But more to the point, in much of the world where there is supposedly “universal health care” – it amounts to exactly nothing: no doctors, no physician’s assistants, no nurses available to provide the much-vaunted universal care. And don’t get started on the quality or timeliness of that care. Or for that matter, on the fact that "health care" is no more a right than is supermarket food - it is a commodity, a service to be purchased by the consumer like any other.

Moving on to food. For thousands of years, ALL of mankind has had “food insecurity” more often than not, and far more than 33.6 million people in the United States are “insecure” based on how you define it. If your local supermarkets closed tomorrow, how long would you be able to eat an adequate diet? For 95% of Americans, not very long. Again, the numbers are suspect, but relative to most of the rest of the world and history, even having this claimed 1/10 as “food insecure or hungry” is incredibly low. (Oh, and by the way, supposedly one out of every four children is part of this hungry sector. If socialism really worked to end this problem, we’d have a whole lot less hungry children. The United States is the land of the “free school lunch” program and most of these same schools (which warehouse an estimated 80% of the children of the nation, and near 100% of those age 4 (HeadStart) through 18 (graduation from high school) offer free breakfasts as well – and two meals a day is more than most of the world, past and present, gets. And these free meal programs are pure socialism.)

Three million people supposedly experience homelessness in the US each year – notice that they don’t say how LONG this <1% of the population “experience” this – because the greater majority of the 3 million experience it for a few days or a week. I have been, by the technical definition, homeless many times in moving from place to place, starting a school year without any place to stay but a friend’s house, or when my parents were moving. Like health care insurance and food insecurity, these numbers smell. But again, compare to the rest of the world – look at the current situations in such great Socialist worker’s paradises as Venezuela, Zimbabwe, or Cambodia – 10%? 20%? More?

And what IS homelessness? People who don’t have homes of their own – but that is NOT the same as living under a bridge, on top of a sidewalk grate, or in a car. Virtually all homeless people DO have a place to lay their head at night – even if it is a homeless shelter, a friend’s house, or a church building basement. For the most part those who do NOT sleep in some space to call their own, even if borrowed, do so because of severe psychological problems including alcoholism, drug addiction, or various mental illnesses. Too many of those may also have children. Of course, there are always people who are hobos (to use an old term) who LIKE to live that way. "Gentleman Jeff" in Heinlein's famous novel "Sixth Column" is the one that always comes to mind. They are the equivalent of the people who live as hermits in the forest or mountains, or the people who don't want any more responsibility than showing up the next evening to wash dishes at a truck stop... if that, and live as gypsies in a car, a truck, or or an RV. As with those "perpetually unemployed" we always will have some of these "permanent homeless" with us. Who are we (or some government nanny) to tell them that they can't live the way they want?

And while we are discussing homelessness, how many of the third-world Socialist countries have sizeable chunks of their population who are effectively “homeless” because they can live in a cardboard and tin shack in some barrio or dockside slum?

“One out of every five children is born into poverty.” Goodness, but that sounds bad. Until you consider the situation in the rest of the world. Yes, even in Europe – and even in Western Europe, large numbers of children are born into poverty. But we have two problems with that. First, what is “poverty?” In the United States, even withOUT the various local, state, and federal assistance programs, people who are living in poverty the vast majority of the time still have houses or apartments, televisions, telephones, electricity, flush toilets, yes, and even cars. Compare this to the rest of the world, and past history. Second, what is used to define poverty In the United States? People on welfare are assumed to be in poverty – based on how much money they earn themselves, and not counting a single dime of cash or in-kind support from government, churches, family, or anything else. And poverty is usually determined on a nationwide basis – but I can tell you from personal experience that “poverty” in NYC or San Francisco is a FAR different thing than “poverty” in Bird City, Kansas or Lazbuddie, Texas or Dove Creek, Colorado. And they are ALL incredibly better than “poverty” or even “middle-class” in Honduras, Panama, or the old East Germany (from personal knowledge) or Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Egypt, or Indonesia (from information from friends).

This paragraph isn’t a “condemnation” of the United States, hard as it tries to be – it is a backhanded complement. The United States of 2009 is the product of liberty, the christian religion, the free market, and the incredible hybrid vigor of the millions attracted by the first three. If we are in decline, it is because of the corruption and retreat from those basic foundations.

That’s life under capitalism in the richest capitalist country. For most of the capitalist world, conditions are much more severe. Nearly 800 million people are unemployed globally. Nearly 2 billion people survive on less than two dollars per day. Some 827 million are undernourished. Fewer than five hundred billionaires and multi-millionaires have assets equal to the three billion poorest people on the planet. While a tiny minority hoards society’s wealth, those who do the work are barely making ends meet or are living at the very edge. The capitalists promote this as the “natural order.” Socialists contend that this argument is merely an excuse for inequality and oppression.

First off, the United States is neither the “richest” country in the world (that is reserved for places like Dubai, Kuwait, Norway, and perhaps Lichtenstein and Switzerland) when determined by per-capita wealth, nor is it a “capitalist” country. There are very few places that might be truly called “capitalist” although there are a few more that are close to “free market” countries – and the US is NOT one of them, either. Indeed, it is hard to say that there IS such a thing as a “capitalist world” except in the fantasies of socialist activists. Most of the world is, like the US, a mixed-economy, and leaning heavily towards outright socialism – the very thing that these people claim to promote as an alternative.

Staggering though the US unemployment rate (officially 10.2 % in October 2009, estimated by some to be as high as 25% in reality) is, the truly ghastly unemployment rates are found in other countries, many of whom claim to be socialist. Venezula, for example, had unemployment of 17% in 2003, and has dropped to 7.40% for 2009 (estimated), but more than 30% of the population are below the poverty line, and inflation was 30% in 2008. These numbers are all suspect, as are those of Cuba, which claims an unemployment rate of 1.9% - a theoretically impossible number. Germany’s federal government cites a 10.8% unemployment rate for 2009, where as the UN’s International Labor Organization said it is only 7.8%. Libya has 30%, Iran 12%, and Mexico has just 4% (amazing!). In other words, you can believe what you want to, because the books are cooked.

What we MIGHT know, assuming the books aren’t cooked too badly:
Today in the United States the top 1 percent of income earners take in 19 percent of the country’s wealth but pay 37 percent of the taxes. The top 5 percent of earners take in 33 percent of the wealth but pay 57 percent of the taxes. The top 10 percent of income earners take in 44 percent of the wealth but pay 68 percent of the taxes. And 85 percent of all taxes are paid by the top 25 percent of income earners. I can see how this is hoarding the wealth by evil capitalists – can’t you? Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent of income earners take in 13 percent of the wealth but pay only 3 percent of the taxes.

What the Socialists don’t want to point out is that most of these countries are very mixed economies, and those with more socialistic economies (more control by government) are generally not so well off. And if there is any correlation between things like poverty, unemployment, longevity, and food supply, it is likely that those countries with more free enterprise are better off than those with more government control, including socialism.

Before leaving this topic, let’s talk about "rich people." The writer of this article wants us to believe that rich people are “capitalists” and got their wealth (and keep it) by being parasites on the working class. Five hundred billionaires and multimillionaires own more than half the wealth of the world, they say. Garbage! First off, that may be the case for PRIVATE wealth – that is, wealth not owned by governments. But that is only a small part of the total wealth of the 21st Century world. Consider the US, and consider ONLY the 650 million acres of land the Federal Government (the People of the United States) owns – just the land, not buildings or any other improvements). At a nominal average value of $1000/acre, that is $650 BILLION. Divided among 300 million Americans, each one of us technically owns $2,167 worth of land –value roughly equal to three years income for the socialists’ 2 billion who live on $2/day. Of course, in reality, the states and the federal government together own much more in buildings, roads, structures, vehicles, equipment, plants, etc., a mind-boggling sum that probably has a low appraised value of $200 TRILLION. Divided among the 300 million of us, we each own a $667,000 share – 2/3 of a million dollars of public property! Added to our own private ownership of homes, businesses, retirement accounts, etc., it is likely that technically many millions of Americans – perhaps well over half of us, are “millionaires.” (Even after we pay off our $12 trillion dollar debt to China!)

But the key is, of course, not what you “own” but what you control, as far as wealth. And here is where the dirty little secret is out – all too often, it is not these evil “capitalists” that control the vast sums of wealth, public and private, it is the high elected officials and the equally high unelected officials of thousands of governments worldwide, whatever they call themselves..

And many of them claim to be, or espouse the tenants of, socialism. The “megawealthy,” whose lifestyles are so hideous to socialists (and frankly, many others), are not the supposedly-private capitalists like Soros or Gates or Onassis or Rockefeller – they are the “elite” like the Tony Blairs, Gordon Browns, King Abdullahs, Kim Il Jungs, Robert Mugabes, and their ilk. Yes, and the likes of Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Ted Kennedy, and US Senators, British Members of Parliament, and French Deputies. Indeed, in 2006, 58 percent of serving US Senators were millionaires, and the median net worth of the US Senators was $1.7 million (NOT counting their $667,000 share of US government assets) – and that is personal wealth and NOT the wealth they control by their power to pass laws and spend taxpayers’ money – by that standard, the US Congress is made up of entirely of billionaires. Indeed, the Soros-Gates-Buffet types are pikers in their wealth and ownership compared to the de facto wealth of the Politburo in Peking, Raul Castro, Kim Il Jung, Mahmoud Ahmadinejed, or Francois Sarkozy – or for that matter, virtually every governmental leader on the planet. It is the political elite who are the controllers, not the “capitalists.”

There is an alternative.

No argument here – but the alternative is NOT to give MORE control to the political elite. Yet that is exactly what socialism proposes to do, whether it is “utopian socialism” or “christian socialism” or “scientific socialism” or “Fabian socialism” or “communism” or “transnational socialism” or “national socialism.”

The next segment of the article (a history of socialist movements from the perspective of the early 21st Century) provides example after example of socialism giving more control to a political elite (although I don’t think the writer intended to draw the same conclusions as I have).

For as long as there has been a working class, there have been efforts made to change society to meet the needs of the many. During the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s, workers organized in trade unions to demand better working conditions. In 1838, the Chartist movement in England tried to open up the Parliament to working people, eventually drawing millions into sometimes-heated battles with the police.

The history could go well back before the early 1800s, of course. There have indeed always been, since well before the Great Flood, those who have sought to become parasites on the working class. Many of those have been warlords, kings, pharaohs, priests, shamans, and the like. Many have been labor union leaders, bandits, thieves, demagogues, and – especially – politicians. Although the need of the many is the excuse for “changing society," history shows that it is the few that benefit from most changes to society.

At the same time, early utopian socialists like Robert Owen in England and Charles Fourier and Comte Henri de Saint-Simon in France advocated socialist systems to provide just solutions to the injustices and inefficiencies of capitalism. They tried to win over rich and poor alike to the rationality of their ideas.

Human reason has long been used as an excuse or a cover for massive utopian projects and for “rationalizing” human society. Too bad that humans are so often… irrational, eh? Both the “utopian” and later “scientific” socialists and their opponents, both the merchantilists and the capitalists (especially the monopolistic capitalists) favored the same “solution” to these injustices and inefficiencies: the use of government force – aggressive force – against their opponents. Both sides, and especially the socialist side, rejected the obvious solution of voluntary commerce and exchange of goods, services, and ideas in a free market, preferring instead for their ideas to be rammed down everyone’s throats at the point of a gun – whether controlled by a “government goon” or a “revolutionary goon.”

It wasn’t until 1848, however, after careful study of revolutionary struggles, that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels put forward a scientific approach to the problems of capitalism—as well as a way forward. The Communist Manifesto, issued by Marx and Engels for the Communist League at the outbreak of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, can be considered the founding document of the scientific socialist movement.

The term “scientific” can mean many things – perhaps the most “scientific” thing about their proposal and its results is that the 1848 revolutions were fought with more “scientific” weapons than any previous such fracas. Their “scientific” approach also rejected all concept of people being governed by religious or other moral principles or other “irrational” and outmoded concepts.

Marx and Engels drew lessons from concrete workers’ struggles and came to the conclusion that capitalism is based on inherent conflict between the working class and the owners of factories, banks and other means of production. But in addition to explaining the working class’s exploitation, they also showed how the working class was the one class that held in its hands the potential to overcome exploitation once and for all. It was for that reason that they wrote “the proletariat [working class] alone is a really revolutionary class.”

Like all models, especially those predating the availability of modern computing and data collection power, the Marx-Engels model of society and economy was incredibly simplistic and full of serious errors. Based on the social structures of Europe, it would not and could not take into account systems in which “capitalists” were also “workers” and “workers” were capitalists, and it completely downplayed the role of the “managerial class.” Furthermore, it simplified all production to a value based strictly on labor, with no provision for the value of raw or partially finished materials, machinery (including automation) or marketing, and treated the entire economy as a zero-sum game. All these errors make their conclusions and recommendations totally wrong.

Based on the experiences of the 1848 revolutions, Marx and Engels came to the conclusion that the only way to end exploitation of the poor and oppressed is for the working class to take control of the means of production through a working class revolution. Only smashing the capitalist state and replacing it with a new workers’ state can lay the foundation for socialism.

Note the language used here (and remember that this is written by an apologist, a member, of the socialist movement – in the 21st Century):

...voluntary cooperation is out, peaceful resolution is out, revolution, “smashing” and violence is the “only way” to achieve the stated goals of socialists. This was proven both in the American War Between the States, and in the attempts from 1848 onward as described herein.

Until 1871, Marx and Engels drew lessons from the workers’ movement—largely through its defeats. But in 1871 the workers of Paris, France showed for the first time that workers could run their own state. The Paris Commune, set up to defend Paris against Prussian invasion and the treachery of France’s capitalist government, gave the first glimpse into what socialism could look like.

The laughable idea that either the French (Imperial) government or economy were “capitalist” is repeated frequently, and is totally erroneous. Napoleon III was as much a “capitalist” as Adolf Hitler or the current rulers of China. At best, a sort of “state-capitalism” verging on syndicalist/fascist economic system existed, in which massive public works and “private” ventures as directed and controlled by the government drove the economy into a false prosperity shattered by war in 1870 which in turn led to the fall of the “Imperial” government and its replacement by a “republican” government which continued all the same policies that were the hallmark of Napoleon’s regime for all of six months – and soon led to the chaos in which the Paris Commune briefly gained control of the city “on behalf of the workers.”

The Paris Commune paid all public servants a worker’s wage. Elected officials were subject to immediate recall and were accountable for helping to carry out the laws they passed. The army and police that had served to oppress the workers were disbanded and the entire working class was armed.

None of these are “socialist” – not that all of these measures were really implemented. There was no “disbanding” of the army. Some of the French army did join the Commune, but most of them and the city’s police were pushed out of the city and joined the French government’s military efforts which crushed the Commune. More than just the “working class” were armed – virtually ALL the residents of Paris had to be armed for their own self-defense, and the Commune tried to deny the right of some people (“counterrevolutionaries”) to be armed.

The Commune was drowned in blood after three months by the combined might of the Prussian and French armies. But it remained an inspiration and an invaluable lesson to many of the subsequent workers’ revolutions.

The only aid the Prussians gave was to release French POWs captured in the war, which were used by the French government to crush the Commune. And numerous Socialists, including both Marx and Engels condemned the Commune for many of its actions, including its distressing adherence to democratic principles, such as free elections.

Since the time of Marx and Engels, there have been many cases where the working class has been able to lead successful revolutions, removing the capitalist class from power. The 1917 Russian Revolution, the 1945 Korean Revolution, the 1949 Chinese Revolution and the 1959 Cuban Revolution all gave new experiences and lessons in the possibilities of building socialism—inspired by the Paris Commune.

There isn’t enough time in the world to explain what a joke this paragraph is. While there were members of the “working class” involved in all these “Revolutions” they were far from the only ones and to call these “successful” is to demonstrate a singular lack of knowledge of history. All any of these four “revolutions” did was to replace one form of government oppression for another. The 64-year dictatorship of the Kim family in North Korea, the 50-year dictatorship of the Castros in Cuba, the long parade of commissars in the Soviet Union (together with the mass murder of tens of millions of Russians and other nationalities, most of them “working class”), and of course the state-capitalist but still brutal regime of the heirs of Mao in China: all fine examples of successful revolutions for those who want incredible power and the ability to kill thousands or millions of others for the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Some important lessons have emerged from all these experiences in building socialism. In the first place, all these revolutions took the ownership of the means of production away from private owners and made them publicly owned. The revolutionary governments sought to steer the economy not through capitalist commodity relations but by means of a planned economy. Foreign trade, once the business of the biggest companies conducted for the purpose of private profit, remained exclusively in the hands of the state.

Well, I have to agree that important lessons have emerged. The number one lesson being that planned political economies do NOT work. A second being that when “everyone” owns something (as in “publicly owned”) that either NO one really owns it or that in reality, the managers own it, and the real owners/workers get the shaft. Foreign trade? First off, most of these countries didn’t (or don’t) have much - China being the exception – but when they did, it was the most primitive and basic of raw materials: sugar, wheat, oil, coal. Second, as usual even in “capitalistic” systems, with the tariffs and controls, it is the state (the bureaucrats, the nomenklatura) that profit. The workers get nada.

All of these means were viewed by the working-class leaders and governments as means to achieve socialism—a society where economic activity was based on fulfilling people’s needs, not the profit of a few. Marx and Engels saw this society as leading to a true classless society—communism—where there was no exploitation and no need for repression, police or jails.

In more than 70 years in Russia, sixty-four in North Korea, sixty in China, and now fifty in Cuba, there is no sign of the withering away of repression, police or jails – just the opposite, in fact. And the profit of the few – the real rulers and bureaucrats and military-police force of the “socialist states” grew ever more dominant while the needs of the people never got met.

The countries that have tried and are trying to build socialism are not utopias, nor are they paradise on earth. They all face enormous problems, including scarcity and aggression by U.S. imperialism. The science of rational economic planning has progressed in fits and starts. Some socialist projects, like the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist camp, were not able to withstand the pressures and have, like the Paris Commune, been defeated.

This article kind of hints at the problems, but has a wonderful excuse for it. It is all America’s fault – even the scarcity is our fault, since we drain the resources of the world for our own ends. Ah, yes, the Soviet-Eastern European “camp” were defeated, but strangely enough, not a single U.S. or western European soldier was involved (directly) in that defeat – indeed, except for a few spy planes, not a single “imperialist” soldier ever “invaded” the USSR or its satellites. And there was no “Blood Week” as in the Paris Commune – which was suppressed by the outside. The Soviet Union and its satellites, even East Germany, fell apart from the inside because their “Socialism” was a failure. Just as China’s Socialism (although not its totalitarian government) is collapsing from the inside out and being replaced by the same sort of mixed economy “enjoyed” by the rest of the world.

If countries like Cuba, North Korea, or Vietnam are invaded from the outside and their “Socialism” crushed ala the Paris Commune, it will be because of the failure of their Socialism – a combination of pity for their workers and others oppressed in the system and fear that their instability and desperation on the part of their rulers – the elite few who profit from human misery and “socialism” – will create human and environmental disasters around them, or around the world.

Nevertheless, these revolutions show the outlines of a new society where the working class is the ruling class. The Soviet Union lasted over 70 years without unemployment or economic recessions or depressions. China was able to feed its huge population for the first time in history. Cuba has maintained educational levels unseen in Latin America—not to mention in much of the developed world.

I try not to laugh – the working class is no better as “ruling class” than capitalists or the nobility or technocrats or telephone sanitizers and used-car salesmen. The Soviet Union deliberately starved and killed millions of kulaks and peasants and anyone else in the way; according to stories from refugees and people freed from this evil system of “Socialism” in the early 1990s, the USSR was in a continual recession. Its war effort during WW2 was sustained by the incredibly massive donations by the very same “capitalist” countries (mostly the US and UK) that are condemned; its effort to arm itself against the West since 1945 was fueled in large part by bleeding the Eastern European satellites dry and selling itself, its soul, and its raw materials and shoddy weapons to half the world. Mao resorted to the same techniques that Chinese emperors and warlords of the past have, and which let them feed its population for millennia: kill off the surplus population. Cuba’s education system? Michael Moore has shown what a joke that is – if the evidence of hundreds of thousands of refugees and reports from missionaries and others were not trustworthy.

Socialists don’t claim that a revolution will solve all social problems at once. Many problems like racism, sexism, and anti-LGBT bigotry have festered for centuries as essential components of class rule. But eliminating the economic basis for these social diseases opens the door to waging a determined and successful struggle against them.

Here we see the rest of the Transnational Socialist (Progressive) agenda brought into the argument, again demonstrating this strange fixation that everything in society and life resolves around “classes” and economics – which strangely enough is one of the accusations they make of capitalists (that everything has a price). For the Socialists, even religion has an economic basis (an opinion they share with Islam, by the way). Indeed, history shows that even monopolistic capitalists are highly unlikely to allow racism, sexism, or “bigotry” of any sort to distract them from their profits and efficient operations of their business – including whom they need to bribe and control in government. Whereas, Socialism has demonstrated (in practice, not in theory) an incredible track record of racism, sexism, and a total intolerance for the non-elite practice of non-standard sexual and other social practices.

The working-class struggles over the past 150 years have shown that “another world is possible.” But wishing for it won’t make it happen. It takes revolution to achieve socialism.

A final appeal to aggressive violence ends this interesting article. Are you a convinced socialist revolutionary yet? “Arise, you prisoners of starvation! Arise, you wretched of the earth! For chains anew are forged for you, more strong than what you have! No more tradition’s chains shall bind us. Arise and be slaves of all the world! The earth shall all be one progressive, one vast prison cell for us all! ‘Tis the final conflict, Let each his chains embrace! March on, march on, let socialism’s chains bind us all! Then shall slavery swallow us all!” (Parody of the Internationale, American version)

So, back to our original question, “What is socialism?”

It is a philosophy and system of government and society that makes the state (government) into a god in which an elite, in the name of the “workers,” controls and spends as much of the economy as possible, and which has failed throughout human history to do anything other than trade one set of rulers for another set, while increasing human misery.

Sorry, Miss Chase, I think I’ll pass.

Articles may be reprinted with credit to Socialism and Liberation magazine.

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Nathan Barton is writing this from a wonderful place in the West, which might be in the Black Hills of South Dakota or Wyoming, or might be in one of the Four Corners States. Exactly where it is, the breezes blow with the scent of liberty, and the sound of the pines or the pinions is the sound of freedom. For thousands of years, people have fought and died for the liberty that Americans in the great spaces of the West enjoy, and he writes these commentaries in the hopes that continued generations will be able to do so, until the end of Time. Visit the blog: The Gospel Sower

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