Here’s a mystery. How can the guy who wrote a few years ago that capitalism is “the most powerful tool for reducing global poverty and inequality” now decide that free markets are a bad thing?
But he did point out that communism has fallen apart, so he wins the award for the “most half-right tweet” of the year. And his prize for winning that award is that I’ve corrected his tweet.
I suppose it is possible that Milanovic is merely pointing out that support for neoliberalism/capitalism has declined.
If that’s the case, then I withdraw my criticism. He would only be guilty of careless wording.
I frequently call attention to my “anti-convergence club” because it shows – using decades of data – that you get more prosperity in nations with more economic liberty.
Including in Eastern Europe, as we can see from this comparison of pro-market reform nations (the dark blue line) and countries with more government (the light green line).
To be more specific, it comes from a chapter, authored by Dan Negrea, Joseph Lemoine, and Yomna Gaafar, that compares the nations in the region that done the most pro-market reforms with the ones that have lagged behind.
Here’s an excerpt.
Eastern European countries…were at a comparable development level at the time of the democratic revolutions that swept Eastern Europe in the late 80s and early 90s. But by 2021 the group was no longer homogenous: they had different levels of freedom, and some had experienced robust prosperity while others had stagnated at a middle-income level. …we show that the countries that experienced more political, economic, and legal freedoms enjoy greater prosperity. Conversely, those which progressed less on the path of freedom are also less prosperous. …We first selected from among Europe’s formerly Communist countries a group with a comparable level of economic development in 1996, the first year with World Bank data for all post-Communist countries. …We then ranked these countries by their progress towards greater freedom by 2021 using the Atlantic Council’s Freedom Index. …We then created two groups. Group 1 includes all countries in the select group that are in the “free” category of this index. Group 2 includes all the other countries in our select group. Next, for countries in both groups, we compared their GDP per capita levels in 1996 and 2021, and calculated GDP growth multiples for each country and for both groups.
As already suggested by the above chart, Group 1 nations are doing much better than Group 2 nations.
If you want some of the details, here’s a table with a lot more information.
Back in September, Richard Rahn also wrote about economic freedom in Eastern Europe. Here are some excerpts from his column in the Washington Times.
…many of the former countries in Eastern Europe that were part of the Soviet Union or under the Soviet thumb have become some of the economically freest and most successful countries. …As a result of economic freedom, real incomes have also risen rapidly so most are now middle income – which is a sharp change from the poverty that they were mired in during Soviet times. The question is “Why did they do so well?” …Estonia was perhaps the best example of rapid constructive change. When the country gained full independence in 1991, its people elected a brilliant young history professor, Mart Laar, who liked to say the only book he had ever read in economics was Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose.” Mr. Laar said it sounded good to him so the Estonians went ahead and did it. As expected, the international bureaucrats at the World Bank, IMF, and foreign affairs departments of major countries recommended against going all out for economic freedom. …their advice was properly often ignored. …To this day, many of the former socialist countries have some of the world’s lowest debt-to-GDP ratios and are much more fiscally sound than most of the major countries. During a worldwide financial crisis, they will be the last ones to go bankrupt or resort to hyperinflation… Most the countries instilled more sensible new tax systems with low-rate or even flat taxes. Bulgaria has a simple 10% flat tax on both corporate and personal income.
The demographic outlook in Eastern Europe is terrible. I wrote on that topic back in 2016.
And here are some excerpts from a column in the Washington Post by Charles Lane in late 2019.
The question now is whether the end might be near for Eastern Europe, demographically. …Of the 20 most rapidly shrinking countries in the world, 15 are erstwhile Warsaw Pact members, ex-Soviet republics or components of the former Yugoslavia (plus neighboring Albania). …Eastern Europe’s looming demographic crisis stems directly from its escaping the Soviet orbit in 1989. Freedom of movement, coupled with membership in the borderless European Union, enabled millions of working-age people to leave the former Soviet bloc for work in the more prosperous West. Emigration, plus low and declining birthrates — a characteristic of modern society that Eastern Europe shares with Western Europe and the United States — has resulted in whole villages hollowing out, with only pensioners left behind. …Demographic decline is extremely difficult to reverse, wherever it occurs. As experience has shown in various countries, governments cannot do much to raise birthrates, even with generous subsidies for families with children.
Needless to say, the situation has not improved. Though it will be interesting to see whether the huge baby subsidies in Hungary will make a difference.
But since I’m skeptical of that approach, I’ll close by noting that Eastern Europe’s demographic decline is a recipe for fiscal disaster because there won’t be enough future taxpayers to pay benefits that have been promised to the elderly.
For what it’s worth, “pre-funding” is probably the only practical way of dealing with demographic decline, and this means big reforms such as personal retirement accounts.
This is feasible. Jurisdictions such as Hong Kong and Singapore also are facing demographic decline, but they are in a much stronger position because they don’t have tax-and-transfer welfare states. People are required to save for their own retirement.
The bottom line is that Eastern European nations need to engage in a lot more reform (especially self-funding for things like Social Security and health care) if they want to continue to make economic progress.
P.S. Here’s one final excerpt, dealing with membership in the European Union, from the chapter that we discussed at the start of the column.
…for Eastern Europe’s former Communist countries, the EU’s rules and standards catalyzed national consensus for reforms to make a clean break with their former malefic and malfunctioning Communist political and economic system. Today, EU support for reform in candidate member states, culminating in their EU membership, is a propellant for freedom and prosperity in these countries.
Notwithstanding my general disdain for the European Union, I agree that membership is good for Eastern European nations.
For our third item, I agree that there’s a difference between Marxism and so-called democratic socialism, but the cat correctly notes there’s a huge difference between free enterprise and cronyism.
Let’s return to the problem that our leftist friends have with the real world.
Here’s Homer Simpson getting ready to thrash both socialism and communism.
Last but not least, our final item notes that the dictators (and their progeny) live fat and happy lives while ordinary people suffer immensely under communism and socialism.
With a body count of 100 million, communism definitely killed a lot of people. Whether they were “friends” is a separate question.
By definition, every communist is a socialist. But not every socialist is a communist (especially not today’s so-called democratic socialists who are really just class-warfareredistributionists rather than real socialists).
The world is much freer today than when I was born, largely because the “Evil Empire” collapsed.
The Soviet Union was awful. It killed at least 20 million of its own people (some say as many as 60 million). It enslaved and impoverished its own citizens, as well as those who languished behind the “Iron Curtain.”
But since the last dictator of the Soviet Union just died, let’s examine Mikhail Gorbachev’s role.
An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal is worth reading because it explains that his biggest achievement was not using bloodshed to preserve communist rule.
Mikhail Gorbachev…rose through the Communist ranks but presided over the end of the regime. His greatest achievement was allowing the Cold War to end without a war or a worse conflagration that the world feared for decades. …He understood that the country he inherited in 1985 when he became general secretary of the Communist Party was losing the Cold War to a revitalized West. Its economy wasn’t the juggernaut of central-planning genius that the CIA had assessed at the time. …Ronald Reagan had reversed the U.S. malaise of the 1970s with a defense buildup and reforms that unleashed America’s private economy. …Gorbachev’s reforms were intended to revive the Soviet regime to be able to compete with Reagan’s America. …The countries of Eastern Europe, long enslaved as members of the Warsaw Pact, saw their moment to break free. Gorbachev refused to send in the tanks as his Soviet predecessors had done in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. …mutual trust between Gorbachev and Reagan…helped to bring the Cold War to an end with freedom as the victor.
George Will is also grateful that Gorbachev allowed Soviet communism to whither away without violence. Here’s some of what he wrote in his Washington Post column.
Failing upward into the world’s gratitude, Mikhail Gorbachev became a hero by precipitating the liquidation of the political system he had tried to preserve… Like Christopher Columbus, who accidentally discovered the New World, Gorbachev stumbled into greatness by misunderstanding where he was going. …Gorbachev’s most noble facet, his “extraordinary reluctance” to use violence to hold the Soviet system together. …President Ronald Reagan…described the Soviet Union as “the focus of evil in the modern world.” …he launched a high-tech challenge to a Soviet Union in which 30 percent of hospitals lacked indoor plumbing. …The Soviet Union’s brittle husk crumbled as Gorbachev struggled to preserve it. His reputation rests on the world’s amnesia about this.
Professor William Taubman of Amherst also opined in today’s Wall Street Journal.
He seems more sympathetic to Gorbachev than George Will, but also lauds him for opting against a bloody crackdown.
Mikhail Gorbachev…deserves to be celebrated… When he entered office in 1985, Gorbachev had almost unlimited power. He could have presided indefinitely over the status quo. Instead, he…acquiesced in the dismemberment of the Soviet empire without the violence that accompanied the collapse of most other empires. …he persuaded communist hard-liners to vote themselves out of office. …Gorbachev was happy to give up domination of Eastern Europe… Gorbachev tried to save the Soviet Union but ended up hastening its destruction. When it became clear in late 1991 that his great project was doomed, he could have lashed out, mobilizing the military to save him and what was left of the U.S.S.R., at the risk of civil war. Instead, he bowed out with dignity.
Matt Welch of Reason also weighs in, emphasizing that Gorbachev was not great, but that he allowed a great thing to happen.
f the late Mikhail Gorbachev had gotten his way, the world would look a lot different than it does now. Socialism would still be the dominant economic system from Leipzig to Yakutsk. The Warsaw Pact would still exist; a unified Germany would not, nor would the independent Baltic states. Above all, the planet would still be blighted by the wheezing and malevolent existence of what Ronald Reagan rightly described as “the evil empire”—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. …Yet we should not judge the eighth and final Soviet leader, who died Tuesday at the age of 91, by his base geopolitical desires but rather by the glorious human flourishing that his actions—and especially his inactions—allowed to take place. …November 9, 1989 became the most liberating day of the most liberating month of the most liberating year in human history.
Last but not least, David Satter shared some insights in a column late last year for the Wall Street Journal.
During its 70-year life, the Soviet regime killed at least 20 million of its citizens for political reasons. …however, the Soviet Union wasn’t indomitable. In 1988 the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev allowed a space for free information in Soviet society, creating a contradiction between free speech and a system based on lies. When glasnost wasn’t repressed, it led to the collapse of the system. …President Reagan rejected the idea that the West had no alternative to accommodation. In the words of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, he took the offensive “ideologically and geostrategically.” …As for his strategy, Reagan said it was simple: “We win. They lose.” …the U.S. rearmament drive began to bear fruit. …Stunned by these developments, the Soviets eventually decided to take the risk of major reforms.
As you might expect, I like the emphasis on Reagan’s role. Yet another reason why he is the only great president of my lifetime.
The takeaway from today’s column is that Gorbachev mostly deserves praise for what he didn’t do. By opting against a crackdown, he allowed the Soviet Union to wind up on the “ash heap of history.”
I shared some anti-communism satire in January and March, so it’s time for some new material.
We’ll start with this look at how people can be victimized by both communism and capitalism…though you may notice that the levels of victimization are not exactly similar.
This next meme is a bit of an exaggeration since there are plenty of private charities in capitalist societies and starvation only occurs sporadically in communist societies.
Early last year, I shared a video explaining that Karl Marx was a despicable human being. Today, let’s look at a video that further examines him and his hideousideology.
This raises an interesting question of picking the most offensive feature of Marxism.
The totalitarian brutality in nations that (so far) have murdered and starved 100 million people?
The the video above is from the Ayn Rand-inspired Atlas Society, I suspect they might emphasize answer #3.
And that certainly is correct, but the best answer is “all of the above.”
I’ll close with the observation that Marx was a bad person, but he’s not nearly as bad as modern-day Marxists.
That’s because Marx was guilty of coming up with a bad theory. Today’s Marxists, by contrast, not only believe in that bad theory, but they hold to those noxious views in spite of 100 years of evidence that communism is a failure of practice.
Though maybe today’s Marxists are simply big fans of very strict diets?
P.S. To see the difference between a good person and a bad person, here’s a comparison of Marx with another person from central Europe.
For our first item, let’s celebrate Marx’s inability to understand basic economics (which helps to explain why jurisdictions that cling to Marxist socialism are among the world’s most impoverished places).
Our second example of satire takes advantage of the historical link between communism and empty stomachs.
If you want to know how the guy in the next-to-last item from this column was raised, I assume this was the book his mother read to him at bedtime.
For our fourth item, I definitely think this tweet hits the target.
Though its not completely accurate since Marxist bosses enjoy lavish meals. Ordinary people are the ones who suffer.
As usual, I save the best for last. Our fifth item mocks how many leftists are motivated by hate and envy.
Since several items in today’s column dinged communism for its inability to produce enough food, I’ll close by drawing people’s attention to this very funny example of cultural appropriation.
P.S. If you wonder whether you might be a communist, take this quiz (I’m embarrassed to admit that I got 6 percent).
We’ll start with this list of nations that have achieved success by following the ideas of Karl Marx.
Speaking of Marx, he’s bragging in this meme about the most notable cuisine of communist nations.
In other next item, Marx is peeved that he is a clown compared to Ayn Rand and the famous duo of Austrian economics, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.
Let’s stop picking on Marx since it’s too much like taking candy from a baby.
Instead, let’s mock the consequences of his evil ideology.
Here’s an item from The Onion about how communism would have been a great success if the Soviet Union had somehow managed to kill 20.1 million people rather than “just” 20.0 million.
Sadly, there are some leftists who won’t understand this satire.
Back in 2014, I compared the long-run economic performance of Cuba and Hong Kong.
Both jurisdictions were roughly equal about 60 years ago. But the data show a dramatic performance gap ever since the communists took power in Cuba, with Hong Kong (which was very pro-market back then) enjoying much bigger increases in prosperity.
Sadly, not much has changed in Cuba since I wrote that column.
Here are some excerpts from a story published by Agence France-Presse.
Cubans are no strangers to queuing for everything from bread to toothpaste, often standing for hours under a blazing sun with no access to a toilet or drinking water, and always with the fear of leaving empty-handed. It is a daily ordeal Cubans have endured for about 60 years of communist rule… Cuba recorded an official inflation rate of 70 percent in 2021, when the economy recovered a modest two percent after an 11-percent drop in 2020, signaling the nation’s worst economic crisis in almost three decades. With government reserves dwindling, food imports — some $2 billion worth per year before the pandemic struck — had to be drastically cut back in the country of 11.2 million. …The shortages affect everyone; even the well-heeled have to contend with long lines, though they often pay other people to hold their place. …It is common for shops to have only two or three products at a given time, or none. Sometimes, people queue not knowing what, if any, product they will be able to buy that day.
Some defenders of Cuba blame the hardship on the United States, which imposes considerable restrictions on trade and tourism with Cuba.
I’m always happy when people recognize the downside of trade barriers, but blaming Cuba’s economic misery on the partial embargo is akin to a football team blaming its field goal kicker after getting shut out, 56-0.
Mary Anastasia O’Grady opined on this issue in her Wall Street Journal column.
Repression and propaganda are the only two things that Havana does well. …For decades, Cuba has blamed what it calls the U.S. “blockade” for island privation. Regime talking points have been repeated ad nauseam in U.S. media and beyond. …Why life for most Cubans is primitive in the 21st century is not hard to discern. Shortages caused by communism have been made infinitely worse during the Covid-19 pandemic because, as tourism dollars dried up, the regime naturally diverted diminishing hard currency to itself. There is no gasoline or diesel for ambulances… Military vehicles and secret-police cars are always ready to go. Nurturing the island’s nomenklatura also takes real money, as does caring for the children of elite kleptocrats who display their obscene wealth—like car collections, thoroughbred horses and luxurious travel—on social media. …Havana is sore because it doesn’t qualify for credit from the U.S. But Cuba is a proven deadbeat, having defaulted on hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to Russia, Europe, Latin America and Japan. The despots are pouting too because they can’t stick their snouts in troughs at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
Let’s close by looking at some long-run economic trends.
As you can see, the Maddison data shows you don’t need perfect policy to get much better results than Cuba.
The moral of the story is that you get great results with lots of economic liberty, okay results with some economic liberty, and miserable results with almost no economic liberty (i.e., lots of socialism).
P.S. The AFP story from above included this hopeful sentence.
The government in Havana has said that boosting national production is the best way to deal with shortages and queues, and has slowly started opening the economy to private enterprise.
We should celebrate this victory over evil every day.
But especially on December 26, which is the 30th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s downfall (the Soviet flag was replaced by the Russian flag on Christmas, but the USSR wasn’t formally dissolved until the following day).
In a column for the American Institute for Economic Research, Doug Bandow writes joyfully about the end of the Soviet Union.
…the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which Reagan accurately labeled the Evil Empire…assuredly was evil. …the Evil Empire’s death wasn’t the miracle that occurred three decades ago. The Soviet Union’s peaceful death was. …Reagan was vital. He recognized the USSR as a national Humpty Dumpty, ready for its great fall. Contra the widespread assumption among foreign policy specialists that communism was likely to be with us for years, even decades, Reagan saw weakness, economic, to be sure, but also moral and spiritual. …Gorbachev…kept Red Army troops in their barracks in the breakthrough year of 1989, when the East European “satellites” slipped their orbits. …Poland and Hungary began the cascade. Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria followed more slowly. Most dramatically, the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, after East Germany’s leadership refused to commit mass murder and mow down protestors. …The Soviet Union staggered along for two more years. The regime increasingly failed to manage the economy. …Three decades ago this month the Evil Empire—created by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, empowered by Joseph Stalin, dessicated by Leonid Brezhnev, and buried by Mikhail Gorbachev—ended. Disappeared. Collapsed. Vanished. Disintegrated. Failed. And all the misguided intellectuals, venal apparatchiks, and murderous ideologues could not put it back together again. …good people can, and sometimes do, win.
The point about the “moral and economic” weakness of the Soviet Union is probably not sufficiently appreciated.
Reagan pointed out (often using humor) that communism was a moral abomination, not some sort of legitimate competing system (I’d be rich today if I had a dollar for every time some supposed expert asserted that we needed to find a middle ground with communism).
It’s probably not possible to measure the extent to which foundational criticism played a role in the collapse of the Soviet Union, but these excerpts from James Pethokoukis seem very relevant.
December will mark the 30th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. …One of the best brief analytical accounts of Soviet Union’s demise is by AEI scholar Leon Aron — a 2011 piece in Foreign Policy, “Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong.” …To Aron, the sudden demise of the Soviet Empire is ultimately a story of moral renaissance, an “intellectual and moral quest for self-respect and pride that, beginning with a merciless moral scrutiny of the country’s past and present, within a few short years hollowed out the mighty Soviet state, deprived it of legitimacy, and turned it into a burned-out shell that crumbled… The long-run decline and demise of the Soviet Union is also, of course, a story of the economic failure of socialism and central planning.
While Reagan deserves considerable credit, he wasn’t the only leader to help push the Soviet Union into the dustbin of history.
In an article for Reason, Stephanie Slade discusses the role of Pope John Paul II.
In 1979, less than a year after ascending to the Catholic Church’s highest office, Pope John Paul II returned to his home country, then under communist rule. He disembarked at the airport, knelt, and kissed the Polish ground. That moment was arguably the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. …While celebrating Mass at Warsaw’s Victory Square, John Paul…said, “that there can be no just Europe without the independence of Poland marked on its map!” It was an astonishing political rebuke to the Soviets, who following World War II had installed communist governments across Eastern Europe that were “independent” in name only. …As the labor organizer and future Polish president Lech Wałęsa put it, John Paul’s pilgrimage “awakened in us, the Poles, the hope for change….I have no doubt that without the pope’s words, without his presence, the birth of Solidarity would not have been possible.” …In 1987, Pope John Paul II made his third pilgrimage to Poland. Independent unions were still outlawed at the time, but that did not stop supporters from hoisting Solidarity banners during a papal Mass attended by some 800,000 people. That same week, Reagan, during a speech at the Brandenburg Gate, intoned: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Two years later, the Berlin Wall would indeed come down. We often think of that as the first domino to fall in Eastern Europe. But in fact, it occurred a few months after Poland held its first semi-free parliamentary elections. Solidarity claimed 99 percent of the open seats. …The events of the period were a triumph for individual liberty.
I’ve pointed out how a grocery store in Texas also helped bring about the end of the Soviet Union.
A TV show about the same state may have played a role as well. Here are some excerpts from a report in the U.K.-based Sun.
Classic soap Dallas brought down communism in the Soviet Union, Eurythmics star Dave Stewart has claimed. …And the claim comes from an impeccable source — a conversation the songwriter had with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1990s. Dave, 68, said: “What Gorbachev was saying — it was Dallas, the TV show. …“Somebody managed to get a VHS to work and broadcast it to part of Russia and they thought, ‘Hang on, that’s how people live in America’. “He said that had more effect, that half an hour, than anything else.” …watching such shows was banned behind the Iron Curtain.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think grocery stories and TV shows were quite as important as Reagan and the Pope.
But I think such factors helped to erode the confidence of the communist elite (the bosses who were much more likely to be exposed to the superior economic outcomes in capitalist nations).
Let’s close with a final observation about the failures of the American policy elite.
I’ve previously opined on the glaring inability of some academic economists to understand the inherent flaws of communism. Well, a recent column by George Will contains these amazing observations about a similar blindness by supposed experts inside the U.S. government.
In 1992, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) remembered a warning by CIA Director Allen Dulles (who would become a Washington casualty of the Bay of Pigs) in 1959 that the Soviet Union’s economy was humming so efficiently that by 1970 the gap between the Soviet and U.S. economies would be dangerously narrow. But, then, the 1957 Gaither Commission projected that the Soviet gross domestic product would surpass the U.S. GDP in 1993. (The sclerotic Soviet Union did not live that long.) Moynihan noted that in 1987 the CIA reported that East Germany’s per capita GDP was higher than West Germany’s, an assessment that “any taxi driver in Berlin” could have refuted.
I’ve written before that Connecticut should change its motto from the Nutmeg State to the Taxnut State.
And if you want an example, consider that Democrats in one town ran for reelection (successfully!) using the slogan “Lowest tax increase in 10 years.”
Maybe there’s something in the water that produces terrible politicians. Consider, for instance, this bit of state-worship from one of the state’s Senators, Chris Murphy.
That’s a despicable sentiment, but Sen. Murphy may actually be decent and rational compared to Connecticut’s other Senator.
Richard Blumenthal actually took part in an event with the Communist Party. I’m not joking. Click on Phil Kerpen’s tweet.
Some highlights of Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal and his introducer at the Connecticut People’s World Committee, an affiliate of Communist Party USA. pic.twitter.com/w5CvV7tGzy
At the risk of understatement, this is disgusting. Communism is responsible for 100 million deaths and mass impoverishment of hundreds of millions more.
It spawned one of the world’s most evil nations, the Soviet Union, and it continues to produce misery today in barbaric regimes such as North Korea and Cuba.
I’m not the only one to be nauseated. Writing for the Washington Examiner, Quin Hillyer explains why Blumenthal’s participation should be viewed as unacceptable.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut spoke at a Dec. 11 awards ceremony for the Connecticut affiliate of Communist Party USA. …Blumenthal pronounced himself “really excited and honored to be with you today” while presenting the group’s chosen award winners with special certificates of recognition… Throughout the event, including in the introduction of Blumenthal himself just 60 seconds before the senator took the microphone, the two co-hosts repeatedly celebrated their Communist Party affiliation and urged listeners to join the Communist Party. …In any rational, morally decent media world, this would be a big scandal. …This is not some warm-and-fuzzy, well-intentioned (even if slightly impractical) affiliation. The Communist Party USA repeatedly tried to subvert constitutional democracy and spy on the U.S. government while deliberately and regularly colluding with the Soviet Union. …There is absolutely no moral difference between consorting with a Communist Party affiliate and consorting with a white supremacist or neo-Nazi one. The record of international communist cruelty is indisputable, with its 100 million deaths far exceeding (in number) the genocidal effects of Nazism. …There is nothing remotely defensible in Blumenthal’s enthusiastic participation in the event. His actions were morally depraved.
Amen.
In the past, my “Politician of the Year” award has been somewhat satirical. I’ve highlighted politicians who are mostly guilty of stereotypical sins.
Senator Blumenthal belongs in a special category, one that merits disgust and disdain.
P.S. It’s quite likely that the Senator was a victim of bad staff work. Some aide or campaign flunky probably booked the event and didn’t conduct the 5 minutes of background work that would have been needed to find the red flags (no pun intended). That being said, he should have walked out of the event when the women who preceded him (and introduced him!) was pimping for the Communist Party.
And what sort of person celebrates food lines because they supposedly fostered a “sense of community”? I wonder if he also thinks that this joyous communal solidarity extended to the people who starved to death because of communism?
At the very least, Mr. Beijer belongs in my collection of commie apologists.
Just as with those who try to defend of justify Nazism, those who try to defend and justify Marxism deserve nothing but scorn from all decent people.
P.S. This is why I wrote a few days ago that Biden’s nominee for Comptroller of the Currency should be rejected.
As explained in this video by Dennis Prager, communism is an evil ideology that has led to the murder of more than 100 million people and the enslavement of hundreds of millions more.
All decent people should not only reject communism, but also ostracize anybody who offers support or sympathy for communism.
We are (or should be) nauseated by anybody who expresses sympathy for Nazism, and we should have the same approach for those who express any support for its sister ideology of communism.
I raise this topic because the Biden Administration wants a Marxist sympathizer, Saule Omarova, to be the Comptroller of the Currency.
The Wall Street Journal has an editorial about this woman, who arguably is Biden’s worst nominee for any position.
President Biden checked off another progressive identity box last week by nominating Saule Omarova as Comptroller of the Currency. …The Cornell University law school professor’s radical ideas might make even Bernie Sanders blush. She graduated from Moscow State University in 1989 on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship. Thirty years later, she still believes the Soviet economic system was superior, and that U.S. banking should be remade in the Gosbank’s image. …”Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best,’” she tweeted in 2019. …Ms. Omarova thinks asset prices, pay scales, capital and credit should be dictated by the federal government. …As they like to say at the modern university, from each according to her ability to each according to her needs. …Ms. Omarova believes capital and credit should be directed by an unaccountable bureaucracy and intelligentsia. She has recommended a “National Investment Authority”…. Democratic Senators have rubber-stamped all but a few of Mr. Biden’s nominees, but Ms. Omarova is the wrong nominee for the wrong industry in the wrong country in the wrong century.
It’s not just the pro-market folks at the Wall Street Journal who have are warning about the impropriety of nominating a radical leftist to an important position.
In a column for the Washington Post, Charles Lane writes about Ms. Omarova’s bizarre views.
Omarova’s left-wing views on banking, and on the Fed’s economic powers, are…radical. Centrist Democratic senators could — and should — use this nomination to demonstrate the limits of their party’s progressive drift. …Omarova…concludes that we might as well resurrect Gosplan. …She proposes that the Fed, not banks, should take deposits from the public, then leverage them by “dramatically augmenting the flow of credit into the coordinated nationwide construction of public infrastructure that enables and facilitates structurally balanced, socially inclusive and sustainable economic growth.” In short, the Fed would replace private commercial banking. …Omarova…refers to her plan as a way to “democratize money.” A more plausible view is that…it would destroy the economy in the name of saving it.
But I also think she should be rejected for reasons of human decency.
We wouldn’t approve nominees who expressed support for Nazism, even if they tried to sanitize their views by pointing to policies such as Hitler’s autobahns or environmentalism.
The same moral standard should apply to people who express any type of support for the similarly evilideology of communism.
Our first item is for the leftists who imagine they’ll be part of the ruling class after a Marxist revolution, only to find out they’ll be part of the 99 percent who endure lives of toil and oppression.
Since young people have a poor grasp of history, our second item is a cliff-notes version of real-world communism.
Next, we have a communist in his parents’ basement, figuring out how to remake society.
Last but not least, they say curiosity killed the cat.
Well, my favorite item from today’s collection is this youngster feeling drawn to an evil ideology.
But the shortcut definition of communism is that it’s socialism accompanied by dictatorship, so we’re simply talking about degrees of coercion.
P.S. There are two videos (here and here) indicating that college kids reject socialism when they’re presented with a real-world choice (and there are two satiric versions – here and here – about how that choice operates).
Two years ago, I wrote that China needed to choose between “Statism and Stagnation or Reform and Prosperity.”
Sadly, as I noted last month in Part I of this series, it seems that President Xi is opting for the former.
Which is unfortunate since China needs a lot more growth to get anywhere near U.S. levels of prosperity.
Yet that’s not very likely when the United States is ranked #6 and China is ranked #116 for economic liberty.
For what it’s worth, China’s score is likely to drop in future years rather than rise, and I’m certainly not the only one to notice that China has economic problems.
Writing for the Atlantic, David Frum looks at the country’s shaky economic outlook.
China’s economic, financial, technological, and military strength is hugely exaggerated by crude and inaccurate statistics. Meanwhile, U.S. advantages are persistently underestimated. The claim that China will “overtake” the U.S. in any meaningful way is polemical and wrong… China misallocates capital on a massive scale. More than a fifth of China’s housing stock is empty—the detritus of a frenzied construction boom that built too many apartments in the wrong places. China overcapitalizes at home because Chinese investors are prohibited from doing what they most want to do: get their money out of China. …More than one-third of the richest Chinese would emigrate if they could, according to research by one of the country’s leading wealth-management firms.
David mentioned “inaccurate statistics,” which is a big problem in China.
But I also worry about bubble statistics, which is an issue the Wall Street Journaleditorialized about earlier this year.
…credit has exploded, with total public and private debt expected to exceed 270% of GDP in 2020, up 30 points in one year. Most of that has gone to state-owned firms and exporters. Smaller, more productive private companies that serve the domestic market report credit shortages. This undermines long-term growth… Unless China can unlock and expand its productive private economy, it will never be able to manage the burden of the debt Beijing has created.. China’s unbalanced recovery represents an enormous lost opportunity for the Chinese people.
David Ignatius of the Washington Postopines on President Xi’s embrace of bad policy.
President Xi Jinping has moved down a Maoist path this year toward tighter state control of the economy — including “self-criticism” sessions for Chinese business and political leaders whose crime, it seems, was being too successful. Xi’s leftward turn represents a major change… The result is a severe squeeze on what Xi views as “undisciplined” entrepreneurs. …Xi’s crackdown has rocked the Chinese economy. The top six technology stocks have lost more than $1.1 trillion in value over the past six months… Xi is animated by what he has called his “China Dream,” of a nation of unparalleled wealth and power — and also the egalitarian ideals of socialism.
In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Dennis Kwok and Johnny Patterson warn that private investors should not trust the Chinese government.
Beijing’s crackdown on private businesses has wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars in market value in the past two months. Under the policies of “advancement of the state, and retreat of private enterprises” and “common prosperity,” the state’s tightening of control will increase. …Beijing assails “foreign forces” for seeking to curb China’s rise as a great nation. That refrain is constantly pushed by state media… Investors and shareholders of Wall Street firms must understand that there has been a paradigm shift in Mr. Xi’s China. Long gone are the days of pragmatism. What the Chinese state wants, the Chinese state gets.
In an article for the Atlantic, Michael Schuman explains how China’s heavy subsidies for electric cars haven’t produced vehicles that can compete with Tesla and other western vehicles.
Do Chinese state programs actually work? …bureaucrats have never stopped meddling with markets. State direction, state money, and state enterprises remain core features of the Chinese economic model. President Xi Jinping has even reversed the trend toward greater economic freedom, notably with a hefty dose of state-led programs aimed at accelerating the progress of specific sectors. …China’s industrial program has resulted in a lot of production, but only questionable competitiveness. Even Beijing’s spendthrift bureaucrats seem to have awoken to that—sort of. They’ve been rolling back direct subsidies to carmakers, with an eye on eliminating them.
The former Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, opined for the Wall Street Journal about China’s resurgent statism
In recent months Beijing killed the country’s $120 billion private tutoring sector and slapped hefty fines on tech firms Tencent and Alibaba. Chinese executives have been summoned to the capitol to “self-rectify their misconduct” and billionaires have begun donating to charitable causes in what President Xi Jinping calls “tertiary income redistribution.” China’s top six technology stocks have lost more than $1.1 trillion in value in the past six months… Mr. Xi is executing an economic pivot to the party and the state… Demographics is also driving Chinese economic policy to the left. The May 2021 census revealed birthrates had fallen sharply to 1.3—lower than in Japan and the U.S. China is aging fast. The working-age population peaked in 2011… While the politics of his pivot to the state may make sense internally, if Chinese growth begins to stall Mr. Xi may discover he had the underlying economics very wrong.
That final sentence is key.
Free enterprise is only tried-and-true recipe for economic prosperity. Chinese leaders are wrong to think they can get faster growth with more intervention.
Simply stated, China appears to be moving further left on this spectrum when it desperately needs to move to the right.
The bottom line is that I’m not optimistic about the future of China.
P.S. Amazingly, both the IMF and OECD are encouraging more statism in China.
P.P.S. I used to be hopeful about China. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, China was horrifically impoverished because of socialist policies. According to the Maddison database, the country was actually poorer under communism than it was 1,000 years ago. But there was then a bit of economic liberalization starting in 1979, which generated very positive results. As a result, there was a significant increase in living standards and a huge reduction in poverty. But that progress has ground to a halt.
In a column for Human Progress, Neil Monnery compares the two jurisdictions.
As the world entered the turbulent 1960s, two men, half a world apart, one a doctor and the other a classicist, both foreigners far from home, were charged with bringing human progress to their adopted countries. …One, Che Guevara, the well-known Argentinean revolutionary, was the architect of Cuba’s communist economic system. The other, Sir John Cowperthwaite, was born in Britain and is largely unknown today. He was central to Hong Kong’s post-war recovery and to its unique laissez-faire, free-market economic policy. …Hong Kong and Cuba had similar GDP per capita in 1960. Since then, Hong Kong’s has grown 14-fold, Cuba’s just twice, leaving Hong Kong seven times more prosperous than Cuba. In 1960, Hong Kong’s GDP per capita was a third of its old mother country, Britain. Now, it is 40 percent higher, matching the United States and Switzerland. …Cuba and Hong Kong demonstrate the compound effect over six decades of state planning versus market forces.
Some folks on the left, when presented with this data, will admit that Cuba has fallen behind in terms of economic development.
But cranks like Bernie Sanders claim that’s okay because Castro and his cronies instead focused on human development.
But that’s a very weak argument. In an article for the Foundation for Economic Education, Hans Bader analyzes Cuba’s track record on education and health.
Castro did not give Cubans literacy. Cuba already had one of the highest literacy rates in Latin America by 1950, nearly a decade before Castro took power, according to United Nations data… Cuba has made less educational progress than most Latin American countries over the last 60 years. …Cuba led virtually all countries in Latin America in life expectancy in 1959, before Castro’s communists seized power. But by 2012, right after Castro stepped down as Communist Party leader, Chileans and Costa Ricans lived slightly longer than Cubans. Back in 1960, Chileans had a life span seven years shorter than Cubans, and Costa Ricans lived more than two years less than Cubans on average. …Today, life spans are virtually the same in Cuba as more prosperous Chile and Costa Rica—if you accept the rosy official statistics put out by Cuba’s communist government, which many people do not.
There are good reasons to doubt official numbers from Cuba.
People who visit the island have sad stories to tell.
For instance, in a column last year for the Wall Street Journal, Andy Laperriere explains what he saw on his church-sponsored trips to Cuba.
It’s astonishing some people still cling to a romanticized version of Cuban life under communism. It bears no resemblance to reality. …people who don’t have children’s Tylenol and cheap reading glasses probably aren’t getting world-class medical care. Another striking feature of Cuba is the pervasive idleness. Everywhere you look, people are standing around. They aren’t working, because they get paid almost nothing. …Even the buildings a few blocks from the seat of government in Havana are crumbling. It’s obvious to a visitor that Cubans live in abject poverty. …there are three classes of people in Cuba. The governmental elite live in gated communities and enjoy what Americans would regard as middle-class living standards. The average person who relies on his own income lives in desperate Third World conditions. In between are people with generous relatives in the U.S. They have more disposable income, but their living conditions are comparable to those of the poorest Americans.
What a depressing analysis.
I wrote a few days ago that Cuba may have done a good job of eliminating inequality, but only because everyone was poor.
But that wasn’t right. Like in many socialist regimes, there’s a tiny sliver of the population that enjoys decent living standards.
Or, if you’re the dictator, you live like a king. Here are some excerpts from a 2014 report in the U.K.-based Guardian.
Fidel Castro lived like a king with his own private yacht, a luxury Caribbean island getaway complete with dolphins and a turtle farm, and travelled with two personal blood donors, a new book claims. In La Vie Cachée de Fidel Castro (Fidel Castro’s Hidden Life), former bodyguard Juan Reinaldo Sánchez, a member of Castro’s elite inner circle, says the Cuban leader ran the country as his personal fiefdom like a cross between a medieval overlord and Louis XV. …the vast majority of Cubans were unaware their leader enjoyed a lifestyle beyond the dreams of many Cubans and at odds with the sacrifices he demanded of them. …In 2006 Forbes magazine listed the Cuban leader in its top 10 richest “Kings, Queens and Dictators”, citing unnamed officials who claimed Castro had amassed a fortune.
Let’s close by addressing the argument that Cuba is only poor because of the U.S. trade embargo.
Professor Art Carden addressed that argument in a column for the American Institute for Economic Research.
I think the embargo…should be lifted immediately, as it has given Cuban communists a convenient scapegoat for their country’s problems. The embargo, however, is not what causes Cuba’s woes, and people blaming the embargo overlook the fact that Cuba trades pretty extensively with the rest of the world–how else do you think Canadian and Mexican merchants get the Cuban cigars they hawk to American tourists? It’s not because a Cuban Rhett Butler is smuggling them past a blockade. It’s because Cuba trades freely with the entire world.
You may be thinking that’s just one economist’s opinion.
But it turns out that Art’s view is widely shared by other economists, as you can see from this tweet from Professor Jeremy Horpedahl.
Wow, these results are even stronger than the survey showing that economists disagreed with Thomas Piketty’s class-warfare hypothesis.
P.S. Let’s enjoy some Cuba-themed humor. First, our friends on the left sometimes claim free trade exploits developing nations. But, it that’s true, why do they claim Cuba is hurt be an absence of trade with the United States?
Ms. Hannah-Jones said that Cuba’s results are because of socialism.
On that point, I’ll agree, though I think it shows why that collectivist ideology is so destructive.
Let’s look at some comparisons based on the Maddison data. This first chart shows how Cuba has fallen far behind Panama and the Dominican Republic, two other multi-racial nations in the region.
The key thing to realize is that Cuba was equal to (or richer than) those countries when the communists took power in Cuba.
But socialist policies have caused Cuba’s economy to stagnate and now Panama is almost three times richer and the Dominican Republic is nearly two times richer (and you can click here is you also want to see comparisons with Chile and Costa Rica).
In other words, Cuba is a role model, but not for anything positive.
Let’s drive that point home with another chart comparing three nations – Cuba, Singapore, and Taiwan – that were roughly equal back in 1959.
What makes this comparison especially instructive is that Cuba went for socialism and Singapore and Taiwan became pro-market reformers. So it should be no surprise that the latter two have far surpassed Cuba.
But most people don’t use the technical definition. There are plenty of self-described socialists who simply want higher tax rates and a bigger welfare state.
I disagree with their preferred policies, but I don’t assume they are bad people.
Speaking of vapid young people, here’s an article from the Babylon Bee, the nation’s top site for political satire.
According to sources, local high-school senior and avowed radical communist Kazden McChitterly is “a bit unsettled” after discovering the hammer and sickle from the insignia he proudly wears on his t-shirts and knit hats represents hard physical labor. “Wait– that’s an actual hammer? Like the kind you swing?” said McChitterly nervously. …Witnesses say he grew even more uncomfortable when he found out about the sickle. “I thought it was just a weapon used to gloriously cut down our capitalist foes!” he exclaimed after discovering it was actually used to gather grain for the government during 20-hour workdays in the bitter cold. …He relaxed, however, after his history teacher explained that “democratic communism” hasn’t yet been tried and is way better than the old communism that involved a lot of work and starvation.
I’m not sure about the identity of this guy, but he’s probably a relative of this libertarian.
Needless to say, we shouldn’t actually be dropping communists from helicopters. Forcing them to live in a communist hellhole such as North Korea or Cuba would be a more appropriate punishment.
Here’s my favorite item from today’s collection, since it accurately captures one of the big internal contradictions of Marxism.
As I noted yesterday, people are imperfect. We tend to be greedy, for instance.
How should Nazism be classified, particularly when compared to socialism? Are these ideologies at opposite ends of a spectrum, or are they simply different sides of the same collectivist coin?
In my humble opinion, both views are correct, which is why I think this triangle is the best way to classify various ideologies.
Nazis are motivated by race hatred and the socialists are motivated by class hatred, so they basically are at opposite ends at the bottom of the triangle.
These different ways of looking at the issue explain why Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post created a controversy when he decided to “fact check” this statement from gadfly Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
According to Kessler, Greene deserved “four Pinocchios” for asserting that Hitler and the Nazis were socialists.
The full name of Hitler’s party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. In English, that translates to National Socialist German Workers’ Party. But it was not a socialist party; it was a right-wing, ultranationalist party dedicated to racial purity, territorial expansion and anti-Semitism — and total political control. …the 1920 Nazi party platform…there are…passages denouncing banks, department stores and “interest slavery.” That could be seen as “a quasi-Marxist rejection of free markets. But these were also typical criticisms in the anti-Semitic playbook …Hitler adamantly rejected socialist ideas, dismantled or banned left-leaning parties and disapproved of trade unions. …We suggest Greene brush up on her history… She earns Four Pinocchios.
This is remarkable. The Nazis called themselves socialists, yet Kessler says Greene is lying for saying the same thing.
I’m not the only one to notice this bizarre example of media bias.
Professor Hannes Gissurarson from Iceland debunked Kessler’s hack analysis.
A ‘fact-checker’ at Washington Post, Glenn Kessler, asserts that a Republican Member of the House of Representatives is wrong in a recent comment on Hitler’s national socialism. It is not, as she had said, a branch of socialism. Kessler writes that the German Nazi Party, despite its name (the National-Socialist Workers’ Party), ‘was not a socialist party…’ In support of his case, Kessler quotes the first eight of the 25 points in the 1920 Nazi political programme… He lukewarmly concedes that in the Nazi programme there were also passages denouncing capitalism. But why does he not quote them as well? …It is hard not to discern the socialist overtones in these points. Why did the Washington Post fact-checker not quote them in full like the first eight? …according to Hayek national socialism could be considered to be the rebellious socialism of the lower middle class… Traditional socialists, democrats as well as communists, shared with Hitler’s national socialists the belief that conscious organisation had to replace the spontaneous order… Hayek is certainly right that there are strong family resemblances between traditional socialism and national socialism. Both are totalitarian creeds.
Professor David Henderson also eviscerated Kessler’s sloppy column.
Glenn Kessler, the Post‘s official fact checker, …analyzes various statements and claims to determine whether they are true. If he finds them false, he awards them Pinocchios, with the number of Pinocchios depending on the degree of falsehood. The highest number of Pinocchios he awards is 4. On May 29, Glenn Kessler earned his own Pinocchios. …Nazis…really were a socialist party. …Kessler attempts to buttress his case by listing the first 8 of 25 planks in the 1920 Nazi Party platform. Those planks do help his case that the Nazis were anti-Semitic (duh) and nationalists (ditto duh). But what about the other 17 planks? …pretty socialistic.
Here are some of those planks that Kessler conveniently omitted.
11. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of rent-slavery. …
13. We demand the nationalization of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
14. We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
15. We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare. …
17. We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.
Henderson also zings Kessler for using a misleading quote from Martin Niemoller.
By the way, the Nazis didn’t merely advocate for socialism in an early platform. They also implemented statist policies once they took power.
Back in 2007, Michael Moynihan wrote about the Nazi welfare state in a book review for Reason.
…the Nazis maintained popular support—a necessary precondition for the “final solution”—not because of terror or ideological affinity but through a simple system of “plunder,” “bribery,” and a generous welfare state. …Requisitioned Jewish property, resources stolen from the conquered, and punitive taxes levied on local businesses insulated citizens from shortages and allowed the regime to create a “racist-totalitarian welfare state.” …To understand Hitler’s popularity, …”it is necessary to focus on the socialist aspect of National Socialism.” …Adolf Eichmann viewed National Socialism and communism as “quasi-siblings,” explaining in his memoirs that he “inclined towards the left and emphasized socialist aspects every bit as much as nationalist ones.” As late as 1944, Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels publicly celebrated “our socialism,” reminding his war-weary subjects that Germany “alone [has] the best social welfare measures.” Contrast this, he advised, with the Jews, who were the very “incarnation of capitalism.” …Hitler implemented a variety of interventionist economic policies, including price and rent controls, exorbitant corporate taxes, frequent “polemics against landlords,” subsidies to German farmers…and harsh taxes on capital gains, which Hitler himself had denounced as “effortless income.”
The bottom line is that the Nazis are justifiably hated for reasons that have nothing to do with economic policy.
Here are two videos from Prager University for those who want more information. First, we can learn about communism and Nazism.
Second, we can learn about the history of fascism.
Let’s wrap up by quoting George Will on the interrelated ideas of fascism, Nazism, and socialism.
Fascism…was a recoil against Enlightenment individualism: the idea that good societies allow reasoning, rights-bearing people to define for themselves the worthy life. …Mussolini, a fervent socialist until his politics mutated into a rival collectivism, distilled fascism to this: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” The Nazi Party — the National Socialist German Workers’ Party — effected a broad expansion of socialism’s agenda…
Last, but not least, here’s a reminder that we should be very wary of demagogues who promise goodies.
All communists are bad, though for different reasons. Some are guilty of stupidity. Some are motivated by hate and resentment against success. And some are psychological misfits that are attracted to brutality.
To address that question, let’s start with this video from Prager University, which is narrated by Professor Paul Kengor of Grove City College.
At the risk of understatement, the video is a damning indictment of Marx’s legacy.
His political ideas provided the justification for the genocides of dictators such as Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.
His economic ideas led to policies that produced mass deprivation, starvation, and immense human suffering.
Now let’s take a closer look at Marx rather than just his ideas.
Was he a good person who simply had some horribly misguided ideals?
Hardly. Everything we know suggests he was a sickeningly despicable excuse for a human being.
Professor Richard Ebeling has some of the sordid details in an article for Intellectual Takeout.
Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in the Rhineland town of Trier. …he was generally a lazy and good-for-nothing student. …Marx’s only real jobs during his lifetime were as occasional reporters for or editors of newspapers and journals most of which usually closed in a short period of time… He had sex enough times with the family maid that she bore him an illegitimate son… He often used racial slurs and insulting words to describe the mannerisms or appearance of his opponents in the socialist movement. …In Marx’s mind, the Jew in bourgeois society encapsulated the essence of everything he considered despicable in the capitalist system… Marx’s caricaturing description of the asserted “Jewish mindset” rings amazingly similar to those that were later written by the Nazi “race-scientists” of the 1930s.
All told, it appears that Marx lacked a single redeeming feature. He was a very bad person with very bad ideas.
P.S. For those seeking more economic analysis, Marx advocated for the pure version of socialism, meaning government ownership of the means of production (state factories, collective farms, etc).
P.P.S. It’s disgusting that there’s a statue of Marx in his birth city and it’s equally disgusting that the former President of the European Commission went there to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth.
P.P.P.S. Marx gets featured frequently in my collection of jokes mocking communism.
So here are some additions to our collection of communism humor.
I’m among the small minority of people who have never watched Game of Thrones, so I don’t know the backstory on these characters, but this meme has a very appropriate message about the nuclear-level naivete needed to believe Marx’s nonsense.
Though maybe the first frame should say “Readers of Teen Vogue.”
It’s bad news that we’re suffering from a coronavirus that has killed several million people globally, but there’s another virus that has butchered 100 million people.
This next image reminds me of the joke about communism and electricity.
Per my tradition, here’s my favorite item from today’s collection.
I’m always very impressed by the people who are clever enough to create these Venn diagrams, and this one is better than most.
Though I’m tempted to ask who is worse, the soulless Marxist who rambles and can’t be reasoned with, or the people who rationalize, glorify, and justify Marxism?
I’ve already shared some politician humor and some socialism humor in 2021, so it’s time to complete the trifecta with a new edition of communism humor.
We’ll start with some gallows humor about the link between communism and famine.
Sticking with the famine theme, here are some translations from the Far East.
Next, we have an item that suggests that March 14 should join December 26 as some type of holiday.
Though I’m sure the former President of the European Commission will be puzzled by the above meme.
As usual, I’ve saved the best for last.
I’ve already written about how many academics (including some economists!) were apologists for communist totalitarianism. Our final meme is a good way of finding out whether some of them still exist.
For the full collection of communist and socialist humor, click here. You won’t find a special wing for Bernie Sanders mockery, but there should be one (also see here, here, and here). And I should probably add a wing for AOC as well (see here, here, and here).
In my lifetime, perhaps the greatest moment for human liberty took place 31 years ago when the corrupt socialist dictatorship of East Germany lost the will and ability to maintain the Berlin Wall.
Almost overnight, there was hope for the long-suffering people of the so-called German Democratic Republic.
In a spontaneous celebration that still brings tears to my eyes, they joined together with the free people of West Germany to tear down the ugly symbol of Marxist tyranny and oppression.
But not everybody is happy that the communism wound up on the ash heap of history. In a column for Jacobin, Loren Balhorn wistfully remembers East Germany’s Stalinst regime.
On October 3, 1990, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), formerly one of the most enthusiastic members of the Warsaw Pact, …ceased to exist…the uprisings of 1989–1990 across Eastern Europe saw the consolidation of a neoliberal order as the supposed price to pay for basic civil liberties and nominal freedom of movement. Communist parties that had ruled for decades fell into disarray, hastily rebranding themselves as social democrats or dissolving entirely. The fall of the Soviet bloc also demoralized large sections of the Left on the other side of the Iron Curtain, prompting the collapse of the international communist movement. …The specter of dictatorship and economic stagnation that is used to (one-sidedly) characterize life in the Eastern Bloc continues to be cited as incontrovertible “proof” that capitalism is the only workable — and indeed desirable — socioeconomic system. Moreover, socialism’s collapse in 1989 demonstrated that, when presented with the choice, most workers opt for the material abundance of capitalism and liberal democracy over whatever a socialist system has to offer. …whatever gains workers had made under socialism evidently were not enough to retain their loyalty when the moment of decision came. …But did it have to be this way?
After posing the rhetorical question whether it had “to be this way?”, Balhorn provides a very twisted answer
For many who survived fascism and wanted a new, better Germany, the GDR appeared as the natural choice. A number of prominent leftist intellectuals and artists, like renowned playwright Bertolt Brecht, composer Hanns Eisler, philosopher Ernst Bloch, and legal theorist Wolfgang Abendroth, opted to move East and lend their services to the cause. …Beyond these famous examples, it should not be forgotten that over five hundred thousand Germans chose to migrate not West but East in the first decade of the GDR’s existence. …The Wall…gave the GDR the chance to build a society that was broadly characterized by modest prosperity and social equality between classes and genders. Workers were guaranteed employment, housing, and all-day childcare, while basic foodstuffs and other goods were heavily subsidized. Though wages were only half of what they were in the West, adjusted for prices in relation to earnings, GDR workers’ actual purchasing power was more or less the same. …class distinctions in the GDR were in fact dramatically reduced, both in material as well as cultural terms.
In other words, Balhorn wants readers to believe that equal levels of misery and deprivation in former communist nations are something to celebrate.
I can’t resist pointing out that his assertion about levels of purchasing power being “more of less the same” in West Germany and East Germany is utter nonsense.
Here’s one final excerpt which must set a record for romanticizing a Marxist dictatorship.
…the women and men who lived and worked in the GDR spent four decades building a society they understood as such and registered a number of remarkable achievements. …we can look to many of its achievements in education, housing, childcare, and labor relations as evidence that society does not have to be organized around the interests of the wealthy and that the free market is not the only way to organize an economy. It is possible to ensure that everyone has a place to live, health care, enough food to eat, and access to education — something that no capitalist society can claim today.
This is – at best – moral blindness.
I noted back in 2017 that there were some economists who used to write about the supposed superior performance of communist nations. But there were merely guilty of naively believing data from communist nations (and also guilty of not actually understanding economics).
I don’t think any of them would be dumb enough to praise East Germany today.
P.S. You won’t be surprised to learn that the nations with the most pro-market reforms are the ones that have most prospered since the collapse of communism.
From a political perspective, however, there’s a difference. Communism is an authoritarian form of government, while socialism can be the outcome of the democratic process.
From a humor perspective, it’s easy (and fun) to mock the economic failure of both socialism and communism, but the jokes targeting the latter often include satire about oppression.
And you’ll see some of that in today’s column, which contains new examples of humor about communism. For instance, here’s a comparison of theory and reality (just like the last image of this column).
But communists don’t always murder people.
Sometimes, as you can see in this next example, they starve people (also the point made by this brutal tweet, and also the last two images in this post).
Next, we have pictures of three things that are associated with millions of deaths.
This next example of satire reminds me of a test where you’re supposed to identify the “one of these things is not like the others.”
Now let’s look at the communist version of Cosmopolitan (they could have picked Teen Vogue, but the disgusting morons at that magazine actually are pro-communist).
Last but not least, here’s an image that’s perfect for the Antifa crowd.
We’ll start with an unusual article from Babylon Bee, a must-read satire site. There’s nothing but a headline and an image.
Though this story is only partly satire.
Given the staggering death toll of communism (a body count somewhere between the Spanish Flu and the Black Death), it is far deadlier than the coronavirus.
Readers in the boomer demographic doubtlessly remember the Beatles. After the band broke up, John Lennon had several solo hits, including Imagine, which became an anthem for some leftists in part because it included the line, “Imagine no possessions.”
The clever folks at Babylon Bee have revised the lyrics in the interests of accuracy.
Have you ever tried to imagine living in a perfect world ruled by communism, but previously only received the information from catchy folk songs which praise the system? Well, lucky for you, it is now easier than ever to understand what a full-blown communist utopia actually looks like. …”Imagine” has been rereleased with more realistic lyrics to reflect the harsh realities of communism. Lennon, long dead—though not by way of communism, since he was blessed to live in a capitalist country—would be proud of the change… While the classic folk song does do a fantastic job of laying out the basics of communism—no religion, no possessions, no food—it never invites the listener to imagine all the people in their true form, which is dead—usually by firing squad, but often by way of starvation as well.
Here are some of the updated lyrics.
Since we just traveled back to the 1970s, let stay in that decade by sharing a sketch from Monty Python.
Last but not least, here’s the utopian vision of communism (embraced by 36% of millennials) compared to the grim reality of communism.
P.S. Apologists for Marxism routinely try to dodge accountability by claiming all the real-world examples “weren’t real communism.” Which creates additional opportunities for satire.
P.P.S. Like modern leftists who talk one way and live another way, John Lennon did not put his money where his mouth was. He preached leftism while enjoying a life of luxury thanks to personal earnings of several hundred million dollars.
Regardless, his views are wrong and easy to debunk.
Writing in the Washington Post, Francisco Toro opines about Bernie Sanders and Cuba.
…you can begin to glimpse the enormous concern Venezuelans and Cubans feel when we hear Bernie Sanders praise Fidel Castro’s education system. …Cuba’s overall educational performance is middling for the region: roughly similar to that of many other Latin American countries… There was never any need to build a police state to bring people to school — an insight so obvious, it’s ludicrous to even have to write it. …To Cubans and Venezuelans — who have witnessed much the same kind of propaganda — talk of Cuban educational prowess grates not because it’s wrong, exactly, but because it serves as a simple way to identify who’s ready to be duped by regime apologists. …When Sanders parrots Fidel’s propaganda, he fails the test.
What’s especially grating is that the propaganda is either false or misleading.
Marian Tupy and Chelsea Follett summarize just a few of the problems with fawning claims about Cuba’s performance.
…in a recent 60 Minutes interview on CBS. Senator Sanders applauded Cuba’s education and healthcare system. Potential Sanders supporters should know that Cuba’s literacy rate and healthcare system are nothing to lionize. First, consider literacy. …Cuba’s literacy rate rose by 26 percent between 1950/53 and 2000. But literacy rose even more, by 37 percent, in Paraguay. Food consumption in Cuba actually declined by 12 percent between 1954/57 and 1995/97. It rose by 19 percent in Chile and by 28 percent in Mexico over the same time period. …Next, consider healthcare. Sanders has repeatedly extolled Cuba’s healthcare system… Life expectancy is the best proxy measure of health. According to Cuba’s official data, it rose by 25 percent between 1960 and 2017. Yet life expectancy increased even faster in comparable countries: in Mexico it improved by 35 percent, in the Dominican Republic by 43 percent, and in impoverished Haiti by 51 percent.
The bottom line is that Cuba performs poorly when looking at education, health, nutrition, and other variables.
But none of that should be a surprise since poor countries generally can’t afford good things or deliver good outcomes.
And the lesson we should learn is that Cuba is poor because government is far too big. Simply stated, the absence of capitalism has been a recipe for misery.
The most shocking statistic is that living standards in Cuba and Hong Kong were very similar when Castro first imposed his version of Marxist socialism.
Yet now there’s a giant gap, with people in Hong Kong enjoying unimaginable prosperity compared to the impoverished residents of Cuba.
Let’s close with two additional items. First, here’s a video from four guys who traveled to Cuba for an up-close view of socialism.
And if you liked that video, here’s another first-hand account of the (nonexistent) glories of Cuban socialism.
Our final item is this look at a street, both as it looked before communism and how it looks today.
The lesson, of course, is similar to the one that we get when examining North Korea from outer space. Communism simply doesn’t work.
You can argue I’m being unfair. After all, I pointed out during the last campaign that his voting record in the Senate was almost identical to the voting records of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (his vote rating also was similar to supposed moderate Joe Biden when he was a Senator).
But that doesn’t necessarily mean they think the same or have the same agenda. As the cartoon illustrates, Bernie wants to travel at a faster rate in the wrong direction.
And it’s quite likely that he wants to travel farther in the wrong direction. And he may even want to get to a very unpleasant destination.
You don’t have to believe me. You can simply listen to what Bernie Sanders has said, in this video narrated by Maxim Lott.
And if that’s not enough, here’s a video from Reason that has more of Crazy Bernie’s extremist statements.
So what should we think when we examine Bernie’s past statements, review his voting record in Congress, and also analyze his current platform?
Is he a radical? Crazy? A Marxist? A democratic socialist? A socialist democrat? Some combination of all those options?
We obviously have no way of knowing what his real motives and thoughts are, but James Pethokoukis of the America Enterprise Institute speculates whether Sanders has learned anything.
What lessons have the events of the last half century taught Bernie Sanders? …He’s certainly seen a lot that would seem to have direct bearing on his ideology, especially the collapse of the Soviet Union… Was he “very distressed” at the failure of the centrally planned Soviet economy? He certainly should have been, but only offers a condemnation of the authoritarian political system. …No wonder he’d rather talk about Scandinavia as his socialist success story. Those tiny economies score well on just about every economic metric. But there’s more to them than universal healthcare and generous paid leave. The Nordic model, according to a recent JPMorgan report, “entails a lot of capitalism and pro-business policies…” That’s stuff antithetical to the Sanders democratic socialist agenda. Indeed, the report concludes, “A real-life proof of concept for a successful democratic socialist society, like the Lost City of Atlantis, has yet to be found.”
For what it’s worth, Ryan Bourne points out that his agenda is more extreme than Jeremy Corbyn’s (which is not an easy task).
…some commentators are downplaying his socialist credentials, painting the veteran Senator as no more than a moderate social democrat. …To simply label him a socialist, without any caveats, is misleading. But it’s even more grossly misleading to suggest his “democratic socialist” ambitions stop at a Scandinavian-style welfare state. More redistribution is central to his agenda, sure, but he also proposes massive new market interventions, including the Green New Deal, a federal jobs guarantee, expansive price and wage controls… Sanders’ platform goes far beyond any modern social democracy in terms of government size and scope. Indeed, his policies can only be considered moderate if some three-way lovechild of the economics of 1970s Sweden, Argentina, and Yugoslavia’s market socialism is the baseline. …compare Labour’s 2019 manifesto against the Sanders’ economic platform. Doing so makes clear that Bernie is more radical than Corbyn on economics, both in absolute terms and relative to their countries’ respective politics. …Combined with national insurance, Labour’s top marginal income tax rate would have been 52%. Sanders’ top federal income taxrate alone would be 52%, bringing a top combined top rate of around 80% once state and payroll taxes are considered. Sanders wants a new wealth tax too, another option Labour shirked. …where there are differences, it’s because Sanders is offering the more radical leftwing policies. He and Labour both proposed big minimum wage rises, national rent control, mandated employee ownership, and workers on boards, for example. But where Labour proposed 10% worker ownership stakes in large companies, Sanders would mandate 20%… on the role of government, the declared economic platforms are instructive. Call it “democratic socialism,” or just plain old “interventionism,” Bernie Sanders is, in many respects, putting a more radical interventionist offer to the electorate than Jeremy Corbyn did.
Interestingly, social democrats from Nordic nations think Bernie Sanders is too far to the left.
Johan Hassel, the international secretary for Sweden’s ruling Social Democrats, visited Iowa before the caucuses, and he wasn’t impressed with America’s standard bearer for democratic socialism, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “We were at a Sanders event, and it was like being at a Left Party meeting,” he told Sweden’s Svenska Dagbladet newspaper… “It was a mixture of very young people and old Marxists, who think they were right all along. There were no ordinary people there, simply.” …Lars Løkke Rasmussen, then the prime minister of Denmark, made a similar point in a speech at Harvard in 2015, when Sanders was gaining national attention. “I know that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism,” he said. “Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy”.
Giancarlo Sopo, opining for the Washington Examiner, worries that Sanders actually is an unrepentant Marxist.
Sanders is not the nice, Nordic-style “democratic socialist” he claims to be. At his core, Sanders is almost certainly an all-out Marxist. …The man has no business being anywhere near the Oval Office — not even on a guided tour. …Sanders has been an unabashed apologist for communism, an evil ideology with a body count of 100 million people dead in its wake. …While people such as my grandfather were languishing as political prisoners in Cuba, Sanders said that he was so “excited” about the island’s communist revolution that watching JFK get tough on Fidel Castro made him want to “puke.” …The 78-year-old presidential candidate even honeymooned in the Soviet Union and came back full of praise for it. Some may not grasp how bizarre this was during the Cold War… Sanders’s platform, which openly calls for nationalizing major industries such as higher education, healthcare, and even the internet, falls well outside the mainstream of U.S. politics and more closely resembles the central planning committees in Cuba and Venezuela.
Last but not least, in a column for the Wall Street Journal, Elliot Kaufman compares Sanders’ radical past with his modern rhetoric.
Campaigning for U.S. Senate in 1971, he demanded the nationalization of utilities. In 1973 he proposed a federal takeover of “the entire energy industry,” and in 1974 he wanted a 100% tax on all income above $1 million. In 1976 he asserted that workers needed to “take immediate control of the economy if we are to survive” and called for “public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries.” He had a plan for “public control over capital.” As late as 1987 he asserted that “democracy means public ownership of the major means of production.” …He had also begun a dalliance with the Socialist Workers Party, a communist group that had followed Leon Trotsky. Mr. Sanders endorsed the SWP’s presidential nominee in 1980 and 1984, spoke at SWP campaign rallies during that period, and in 1980 was part of its slate of would-be presidential electors. …After three decades in Congress, he has settled on a populist vision that fits in on the Democratic left. In a major speech last June elaborating his idea of socialism, he cast himself in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt… He enumerated a series of positive rights—to “quality health care,” “as much education as one needs,” “a good job that pays a living wage,” “affordable housing,”… But he said nothing about state control over the means of production or Fidel Castro’s revolution.
So who’s the real Bernie Sanders?
I have no idea whether he still wants government ownership and control of the means of production (i.e., pure socialism with state-run factories, collective farms, etc). I also don’t know whether his past support for awful Marxist dictatorships meant he actually was a Marxist.
A few years ago, I created a three-pronged spectrum in an attempt to illustrate the various strains of leftism.
I’ve decided to create a more up-to-date version. It shows that the Nordic nations are part of the rational left. A bit further to the left are conventional leftists such Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and then Barack Obama.
At that point, there’s a divergence, with Hitler and Stalin representing totalitarian socialism at the top and pure socialists (such as the U.K.’s Clement Attlee, who nationalized industries and sectors after World War II) at the bottom.
Without knowing what he truly thinks, I’ve put Bernie Sanders in a middle category for “Crazies.”
I suspect he has sympathies for the two other strains of leftism, but the real-world impact of his policies is that America would become an even-worse version of Greece (though hopefully not as bad as Venezuela).
P.S. Given that he’s now the leading candidate to win the Democratic Party’s nomination, and given that he’s ahead in some national polls, I’m very thankful that America’s Founders bequeathed to us a system based on separation of powers. If Sanders somehow makes it to the White House, he’ll have a very difficult time pushing through the radical parts of his agenda. Yes, it’s true that recent presidents (both Obama and Trump) have sought to expand a president’s power to unilaterally change policy, but I feel confident that even John Roberts and the rest of the Supreme Court would intervene to prevent unilateral tax increases and nationalizations.
P.P.S. More than 10 years ago, I speculated that America’s separation-of-powers system would save the country from Obamacare and cap-and-trade. I was half right.
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