Communism Humor

I only had two columns mocking communism in 2023 (here and here), which seems inadequate given the massive failure of Marx’s evil ideology.

So let’s get a good start on 2024 with some anti-communism satire.

We’ll start with this meme about the dumb kids who will be very disappointed if they ever achieve their dream of a communist society.

I already mentioned that communism has failed miserably (North Korea, Cuba, Soviet Union, etc).

Our second example of humor involves some unexpected self-awareness by Karl Marx.

Next, the Babylon Bee has an article explaining 10 differences between capitalism and communism.

The whole list is worth reading, but here are a few of the examples.

Since I’ve already mentioned North Korea, this next cartoon is appropriate.

To be sure, communists doubtlessly would respond with the laughable (and oft-used) claim that North Korea isn’t “real communism.”

Per tradition, I’ve saved the best for last.

Here’s something you might see if microscopes were very advanced.

One of the (many) problems with communism, though, is that it quickly becomes apparent that there are too many people wanting to ride in the wagon and not enough people willing to pull the wagon.

In other words, you can’t be a parasite unless someone is willing to produce.

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China’s Statism = Autocratic Incompetence

Earlier this year, I put together three sentences that summarize the post-1949 economic history of China.

• Crippling communist failure and suffering under Mao.
• Partial reform during the “Washington Consensus” era.
• Backsliding to more statism under President Xi.

For those of us who would like to see China liberalize and prosper, the vexing question is why President Xi has moved his country in the wrong direction.

Most recently, I speculated that the answer is basic government incompetence.

George Will wrote on this topic last week for his Washington Post column. He thinks the answer, at least in part, is that dictators like having a “party-state” that prioritizes political control over economic progress.

In Russia, then in Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany and elsewhere, including modern China, Leninism provided a new model of government: the party-state. Except China cannot be both modern and Leninist. Modernity requires social openness… Lenin’s party-state…has…two incurable defects: All policies are subordinate to the primary objective of maintaining the party’s dominance. And the party incubates society’s elites, who insinuate themselves everywhere into allocating wealth and opportunity. Absent market signals, this produces cascading inefficiencies in the allocation of society’s human and material resources. …China is misleadingly said to have a “hybrid” economy of government planning leavened and disciplined by market forces. This suggests more orderliness than actually exists. Market forces are casually disregarded by the CCP’s innumerable tentacles. China’s “industrial policy” — pervasive government entanglement with private-sector enterprises — is a road to private-sector serfdom.

I definitely agree that China’s industrial policy has been an economic disaster (which is why it is so bizarre that some American politicians want to copy that approach).

But let’s focus on the earlier part of the excerpt, involving a strong “party-state.” Does this require bad economic policy?

It is certainly true that Mussolini, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao all had very anti-free market policies, but there are historical counter-examples (such as Chile and Singapore) that show it is possible to have a combination of economic freedom and political oppression.

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Communism Humor

The previous time we made fun of communism was back in July, so let’s add to the collection today.

We’ll start with an example that will ring true to all dog owners.

Speaking of food, our second item notes that nourishment is one of the things you sacrifice when getting rid of capitalism

People mock socialism (the economic system in communist nations) because workers have miserable lives. However, as the Babylon Bee reminds us, but it does better than capitalism at creating certain types of jobs.

Notice that job #6 involves lack of food.

Well, that’s a bit of a theme today, as indicated by our fourth item.

Last but not least, my favorite bit of satire today involves the Berlin Wall.

For what it’s worth, it’s endlessly amusing to discuss the Berlin Wall with hard-core leftists. Their most-common rationalization is that the Wall was designed to “protect” East Germany from the polluting influence of Western culture.

In reality, of course, the Berlin Wall was designed to imprison people who otherwise would “vote with their feet” against the evil of communism.

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A Communist with a Truthful Agenda

In large part because of an economic system completely at odds with human nature, communists have a nasty habit of never delivering on Marx’s vision.

• They promise equality, but the elite enjoy lavish lifestyles while ordinary people suffer.
• They promise better lives for workers, but they deliver deprivation and suffering.
• They promise harmony, but the reality of socialists societies is division and discord.

One obvious conclusion is that communists are despicable people  That’s true, and the people who give aid and comfort to communists also deserve scorn.

Another conclusion is that we should disbelieve anything communists say.

Based on the above examples, that would be an understandable conclusion.

But I have found a communist who is semi-truthful. His name is Kohei Saito and I trust him because he is telling people that his policies will lead to less prosperity.

Here are some excerpts from a New York Times story by Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno.

When Kohei Saito decided to write about “degrowth communism,” his editor was understandably skeptical. Communism is unpopular in Japan. …So a book arguing that Japan should view its current condition of population decline and economic stagnation not as a crisis, but as an opportunity for Marxist reinvention, sounded like a tough sell. But…Mr. Saito’s book “Capital in the Anthropocene” has sold more than 500,000 copies, exceeding his wildest imaginings. Mr. Saito, a philosophy professor at the University of Tokyo, appears regularly in Japanese media to discuss his ideas. …Mr. Saito said, …“there are too many cars, too many skyscrapers, too many convenience stores, too much fast fashion,”… Mr. Saito is not clear exactly what shape a world under degrowth communism would take, but he insists that it would be…focused on expanding communal resources.

It is safe to say that Mr. Saito is an immoral idiot.

But I have to give him credit for accidental honesty. Communism is very capable of delivering “degrowth.”

If Japan follows Saito’s advice, it is a sure bet that there will be fewer cars, fewer skyscrapers, fewer convenience stores, and less fashion.

By the way, in addition to being an immoral idiot, Mr. Saito is also a hypocrite (a common problem on the left).

Mr. Saito’s critics have called him out for castigating the capitalist system he himself has benefited from… He recently moved into a three-story home in an upscale neighborhood..

It’s unfortunate that the New York Times decided to devote attention to a crank like Saito, though I guess it is somewhat newsworthy that he has sold 500,000 books.

So I won’t criticize the authors for writing the story. But I can’t resist pointing out some economic illiteracy in their report. They write about supposed problems with capitalism, but the Japanese policies they cite – easy money and wasteful spending – are examples of statism.

Mr. Saito has tapped into what he describes as a growing disillusionment in Japan with capitalism’s ability to solve the problems people see around them… Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, has worked for years to promote economic growth… But there are strong indications that the country’s…policies of ultracheap money and big government spending are reaching their limits.  The interventions have done little to stimulate growth.

Keynesian policies didn’t work? At the risk of being overly sarcastic, I’m shocked, shocked.

I’ll close with a few general observations about Japanese economic policy.

The good news is that post-war capitalism enabled Japan to become reasonably prosperous.

But the bad news is that a range of misguided policies, starting with industrial policy in 1960s and 1970s and continuing with Keynesian spending and tax increases in the 1990s and beyond, have eroded Japan’s competitiveness. The nation is slowly but surely falling behind.

Mr Saito wants to accelerate his country’s decline. Hopefully Japanese policymakers will ignore his poisonous advice.

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Communism Humor

I haven’t shared any communism mockery since last year, so let’s use today’s column as an excuse to laugh once again at this evil ideology.

We will start with the lather-rinse-repeat cycle of communist failure.

Speaking of starving (a major theme with communism), here’s our second item.

Libertarians have a reputation for being dorky with the opposite sex.

It seems communists have the same problem.

While communist theoreticians are despicable, people who vote for communists are probably best characterized as dumb.

As usual, I’ve saved the best for last.

Here’s a look at communism in action.

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Some leftists actually claim that “real communism hasn’t been tried.”

Perhaps, but almost communism has racked up a very heavy body count, so I can’t imagine the real version would produce better results.

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Poland’s Recovery from Socialism

I was surprised to learn last year that Poland’s economy has out-performed China’s economy over the past three decades.

Given the way free markets out-perform statism, I should have known this would be the result.

Today, let’s take a closer look at how Poland has recovered from socialism. And we’ll start with this chart showing much better economic performance after the early-1990s transition from communist control.

The chart comes from a new book, The Road to Socialism and Back, published by the Fraser Institute.

Written by Peter J. Boettke, Konstantin Zhukov, and Matthew Mitchell, it explains that Poland’s economy was stagnant after World War II because the Soviet Union imposed socialism. But the collapse of the Soviet Empire enabled Poland to adopt market-friendly reforms and the economy has since flourished.

For 45 years, the Polish people were the subjects of a grand national experiment. …unquestionably a negative result experiment. …the Polish economy stagnated. While real incomes grew at a sluggish pace, shortages of necessities—meat, electrical appliances, even toilet paper and sanitary napkins—were endemic. …In time, the system collapsed in on itself. Weighed down by foreign debt, hamstrung by corruption and privilege, stagnating under sluggish growth and spiraling inflation, and stalked by the ever-present threat of mass shortages, the economy fell apart… Under the leadership of Minister of Finance Leszek Balcerowicz, the nation embarked on a bold plan to transform itself back into a mixed economy. …once growth resumed, real per capita GDP grew at more than twice its pre-reform rate. Shortages that had plagued the economy for decades disappeared within weeks. Hyperinflation was tamed. Living standards—and even life expectancy—rose.

The authors do not claim Poland is a laissez-faire role model. Indeed, some of the latter chapters point out that the country still has an excessive burden of government and other sub-optimal policies.

But a key message from the book is that Poland’s economy is now much stronger since it gets about a 7 (on a 1-10 scale) from Economic Freedom of the World. That’s not a a great score, but it’s much better than a score of 4, which is where Poland was during the communist era.

I’ll close by observing that the book is filled with details on how socialism was imposed in Poland.

And it is filled with details on how Poland extricated itself from those wretched policies.

P.S. People can make a difference. The book repeatedly cites the critical role of Leszek Balcerowicz, who served as Deputy Prime Minster, Finance Minister, and head of the central bank. I’ve cited some of his research in other columns (see here and here).

P.P.S. I wrote in 2017 how socialism followed by reform caused Poland to diverge and then converge with Spain. I guess that means Poland counts as a former member of the anti-convergence club?

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The Most Half-Right Tweet of 2023

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?

To be technical, Branko Milanovic of the City University of New York did not say that free markets are bad. He didn’t even say that capitalism is bad. Or that classical liberalism is misguided.

But he did assert in a tweet that “neoliberalism” as an ideology has fallen apart. And since neoliberalism in most parts of the world is used as a (often hostile and denigrating) term for laissez-faire economics, he certainly seems to be condemning free enterprise.

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 fear, however, that the intention is to be critical of free enterprise. In which case, I ask Milanovic to respond to my never-answered question or to counter my anti-convergence club.

Heck, I’ll be happy if he would simply indicate which direction policy should move if we want more prosperity.

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Eastern Europe and Economic Reform

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.

And that’s true everyplace in the world.

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).

The chart comes from a new report, A World in Flux: Toward a New European Architecture, published by the Aspen Institute.

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.

Estonia is a success story, so I’m glad Richard discussed Mart Laar (one of the few admirable politicians in the world).

Now let’s share some bad news.

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.

This is a problem in many nations, of course, but it’s a crisis in Eastern Europe.

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.

Not because they get subsidies, of course, but because EU membership means better rule of law.

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Socialism/Communism Humor

I’ve shared many columns featuring communism humor and even more columns filled with socialism humor.

Today, let’s look at crossover humor. Each of these five items applies equally to both of those collectivist ideologies.

The worst person in world history makes an appearance in our first item.

Our next item mocks leftists in general.

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.

P.S. To close with a serious comment, socialism is an economic system based on misguided policies such as government ownership, central planning, and price controls. Communism is a political system based on dictatorship and oppression.

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-warfare redistributionists rather than real socialists).

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Gorbachev, Reagan, and the Much-Deserved End of the Soviet Union

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.”

Ronald Reagan deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the collapse of communism – in part because he restored America’s economic vitality and built up the nation’s military, but also because he directly condemned the immorality of Marxism (often using humor).

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.”

And that’s a great result.

P.S. Here’s my collection of columns about the grim 100th anniversary of communism.

P.P.S. And here’s my collection of anti-collectivism humor, including many columns mocking communism.

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Communism Humor

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.

But the core point is correct.

I also don’t think our third item is correct given the overwhelmingly leftist orientation of academic historians.

But it is nonetheless amusing because there is a strong link between supporting communism and ignoring history.

For our fourth item, here’s a new version of the Santa-to-Marx evolution.

As usual, I’ve saved the best for last.

Modern-day communists almost surely imagine themselves as party bosses in a Marxist society.

But as shown in the fourth item in this post and the first item in this post, that is a silly fantasy.

With the exception of a tiny elite, everyone is communist societies is little better than a slave to the state.

P.S. I will never cease to be embarrassed that I scored 6% in a are-you-a-communist quiz. In my defense, some of the questions are poorly worded.

P.P.S. Here’s the entire collection of communism and socialism humor.

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Despicable Marx and Disgusting Marxism

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 hideous ideology.

This raises an interesting question of picking the most offensive feature of Marxism.

1. The totalitarian brutality in nations that (so far) have murdered and starved 100 million people?
2. The economic illiteracy of a system that has anywhere and everywhere produced misery and poverty?
3. The moral abomination of an ideology that assumes individuals are abjectly subservient to the state?

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.

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Communism Humor

Our last compilation of anti-communism humor was back in January, so it’s time to expand our collection.

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).

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Communism Humor

My most-recent edition of communism mockery was last October.

So let’s take this opportunity to add to our ever-growing collection.

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.

Our fourth item shows the results of a real-world experiment between capitalism and communism.

A comparison of East Germany and West Germany tells the same story.

Per tradition, I’ve saved the best for last.

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.

These are the nutjobs who claim that “real communism hasn’t been tried.”

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The Ongoing Horror of Cuban Socialism

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.

The communist dictatorship is still there, and the economy is still socialist (notwithstanding even Castro admitting its failure).

And this means ongoing misery for ordinary people.

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.

Virtually all economists, including left-leaning ones, agree that bad Cuban economic policy is what’s causing deprivation and suffering.

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.

I started this column by charting the difference between Cuba and Hong Kong. But since Hong Kong’s economic attractiveness is being eroded by China, let’s instead see how Cuba compares to a handful of other nations.

I’ve previously compared Cuba and pro-market Taiwan, as well as Cuba and sort-of-pro-market Panama. Now let’s add sort-of-pro-market Botswana to the analysis.

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).

Which is the lesson of my anti-convergence club.

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.

I certainly hope this is true, though I’m skeptical since previous promises economic liberalization have not been fulfilled (heck, they’ve even attracted mockery from late-night TV hosts).

P.P.S. Communism has always attracted dupes and apologists. In the case of Cuba, that list includes Bernie Sanders, Nicholas Kristof, and Nikole Hannah-Jones. And maybe we should add Jeffrey Sachs and some environmentalists to that list as well.

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Celebrating the Death of the Evil Empire

There are not many advantages to being old, but I feel lucky to have been alive to see the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

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 don’t like majoritarianism, but passages like this are why I’m also not a fan of rule by self-styled experts. But that’s a topic for another day.

The moral of today’s column is that communism was an evil failure.

As epitomized by the Soviet Union, it was an economic failure and a humanitarian failure.

P.S. If you want to learn more about the economic performance of East Germany and West Germany, you can click here.

P.P.S. If you want other examples of how communist economics led to terrible outcomes, you can also compare Czechoslovakia to nations in Western Europe, as well as Cuba vs Chile and North Korea vs South Korea.

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(Reprehensible) Politician of the Year

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

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) December 15, 2021

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.

• Special privileges.
• Entitlement mentality.
• Impressive corruption.
• Uncharacteristic honesty.
• Taxpayer-funded vanity.

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.

He gave aid and comfort to an evil, repugnant, and despicable ideology.

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The Most Morally Reprehensible Tweet of 2021

I periodically highlight tweets that deserve attention because they say something important, often in a clever and succinct fashion.

• Best-ever tweet about inequality.
• Best tweet about capitalism vs socialism.
• The most depressing tweet.
• Trump’s worst-ever tweet.
• The best-ever counter-tweet.
• A joyous tweet about school choice.

Today, we’re going to look at a tweet that belongs in a terrible category.

Let’s call this tweet, from some guy named Carl Beijer, the Most Morally Reprehensible Tweet of the year.

Imagine being so in love with this evil ideology that you’re willing to overlook 100 million murders?

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.

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Biden’s Pro-Communist Nominee

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.

To be sure, Ms. Omarova is an unacceptable nominee for her support for hard-core socialist policies such as central planning and government control of credit.

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 evil ideology of communism.

Simply stated, communism and anything connected to it should be beyond the pale.

P.S. This is why I’ve condemned senior bureaucrats at the European Commission, the Baltimore Symphony, and Mercedes.

P.P.S. I’m proud to say that I totally failed the are-you-a-communist quiz.

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Communism Humor

I’ve been recently receiving lots of good material for our collection of communism humor.

I shared items in both August and September, and now we have a new batch for October.

The first bit of satire shows that it’s better to be victimized by capitalism than communism.

The second item in our collection is a further reminder that you have to choose whether you want full socialism or a full stomach.

Our next item is almost identical to one that I shared back in March, except mountain lions have been replaced by Canadian geese.

Next we have a big of humor involving two of history’s biggest mass murderers, Stalin and Lenin.

And here’s my favorite item, which will appeal to history buffs who remember that Hitler and Stalin agreed to carve up Poland.

A nice reminder that totalitarianism is reprehensible, regardless of the flavor.

Statist ideologies are the opposite of libertarianism.

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Communism Humor

Time to augment our collection of communism humor.

But instead of random satire about communism, which is my usual approach, there’s a theme for today’s collection.

We’re going to mock fuzzy-headed youngsters who are drawn to this totalitarian ideology.

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.

To be fair, more young people are drawn to socialism than communism

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).

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Economic Backsliding by China, Part II

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 Journal editorialized 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 Post opines 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.

In other words, industrial policy is backfiring on China.

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.

The country needs a Reagan-style agenda (the approach used by Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) to achieve genuine convergence.

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.

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Communism Humor

My collection of anti-communism humor has grown significantly this year (see here, here, here, and here), but I don’t think any of those jokes can match this parody of John Lennon’s vapid song.

Kudos to the Babylon Bee.

Our second item shows empathy to our leftist friends who have to pimp for a system that has an endless track record of brutality and deprivation.

I’m not sure why I found this next meme so enjoyable.

Perhaps because it captures the utter misery of 99 percent of the population in a communist system.

I was thinking about making this next item a “Tweet of the Year,” but I’ve already done that for 2021.

In any event, it is pure anti-communism satire and belongs in today’s grouping.

I don’t know if the person on the left is a guy or a girl (or something in between), but I’m guessing he/she enjoyed a comfortable upbringing.

Per tradition, I close with my favorite item. And it is perfectly captures why there was bad parenting in the preceding example.

Though my daughter (who was raised properly) is going through her obligatory leftist-millennial phase, so I shouldn’t be pointing too many fingers.

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Cuba’s Socialism Has Been a Total Failure

I like cross-country comparisons – such as North Korea vs South Korea and East Germany vs. West Germany – because they can be very informative when comparing the results of socialism vs. markets.

One of the most dramatic examples is Cuba vs. Hong Kong.

More than 60 years ago, back when Castro took power, the two jurisdictions had similar living standards.

But as Cuba tried socialism and Hong Kong chose free enterprise, there was a stunning divergence. Cuba is a basket case and Hong Kong is rich.*

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.

I am tempted to call this a consensushttps://t.co/1pzefUYYov pic.twitter.com/ulvhKx4Juq

— Jeremy 'adjusted for inflation' Horpedahl 📈 (@jmhorp) February 26, 2020

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?

Next, here’s a t-shirt suggesting we swap freedom-seeking Cubans for statism-seeking Americans.

I’m in favor of that trade, though I suspect American leftists wouldn’t actually want to live in a socialist country.

P.P.S. I have great disdain for the “useful idiots” who concoct arguments to make Cuba’s repressive regime look good.

*Let’s hope China doesn’t ruin Hong Kong’s economy.

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The World’s Most Perverse (but Perhaps Accurate) Observation about Cuba

Weird items sometimes show up in my inbox, and this clip from Nikole Hannah-Jones (creator of the academically shoddy 1619 Project) definitely qualifies.

She actually cites the economic wasteland of Cuba as a role model for equality.

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.

The same thing is true, by the way, if you compare Hong Kong and Cuba.

Let’s conclude by addressing one final point.

Ms. Hannah-Jones asserted that Cuba deserves praise for having equality.

I doubt that’s true since left-wing dictators usually steal lots of money while ordinary people suffer.

But even if she’s right and Cuba genuinely has equality, it’s only because socialism has impoverished everyone, including the ruling class.

Our friends on the left apparently think that’s something to applaud, as Margaret Thatcher observed, but I’d rather be part of a society characterized by an “unequal sharing of the blessings.”

P.S. Ms. Hannah-Jones may be even more wrong about Cuba than Bernie Sanders, Jeffrey Sachs, or Nicholas Kristof.

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Communism Humor

What’s the difference between a socialist and a communist?

If we’re using the technical definition of socialism (government ownership, central planning, and price controls), there’s no difference. At least with regards to economics.

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.

By contrast, I automatically assume that self-described communists are despicable human beings. After all, what sort of person identifies with an ideology that has caused 100 million deaths?

Which is why socialism humor usually mocks the naivete of supporters while communism humor highlights the moral blindness of supporters.

Such as this meme.

There’s a special place in hell (much deserved) for the vapid young people who wear Che t-shirts.

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.

But capitalism at least channels greed productively. We have to serve others if we want wealth. With communism, however, ruling others (and impoverishing them) is the only source of wealth.

Heck, even voluntary forms of Marxism don’t work.

P.S. Here’s a quiz that tells you the extent to which you have communist thoughts (I was offended that I scored 6 percent).

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Were Hitler’s National Socialists Really Socialists?

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.

But both ideologies are against free markets and both put the state over the individual, so they are far away from libertarianism (or classical liberalism) when looking from top to bottom.

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.

But it’s also true that their economic policy was a version of socialism (fascism involves government control rather than government ownership, but the result is the same).

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.

P.S. Kessler should have “fact checked” the last part of Rep. Greene’s statement. As much as I dislike “democratic socialism,” today’s Democrats are not trying to impose a totalitarian system.

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Communism Humor

Communism has a horrible track record of murder and brutality. It also leads to economic disaster wherever it is implemented.

And its founder, Karl Marx, was a despicable excuse for a human being.

But the tiny silver lining to that awful dark cloud is that at least we have endless opportunities to mock this evil ideology.

So let’s augment our collection of anti-communism humor.

We’ll start with this story about how dinosaurs went extinct, along with what might cause the world’s next mass extinction.

Our second item speculates that vapid young people will cast off their silly views once they get a job.

Of course, this may not be true if they get the wrong kind of job.

Next is a look at how China has created a modern version of Mary Shelley’s literary classic.

Reminds me of this gem from 2010.

Next we have a satirical tweet.

A Marxist is someone who reads Marx.

An anti-Marxist is someone who reads the history of Marxism.

— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) April 22, 2021

Per tradition, I’ve saved the best for last.

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.

This next item mocks the Marxists, like the Chavez family in Venezuela who use it as a scam to line their own pockets.

Any resemblance to Bernie Sanders, of course, is purely coincidental.

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Karl Marx: Worst Person in World History?

Since more than 100 million people have been killed by communist regimes, should we conclude that Karl Marx is the worst person in world history?

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.

Indeed, it’s safe to assume that the best thing he did in his life occurred on March 14, 1883.

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.

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Communism Humor

I mostly mock socialism, but its authoritarian cousin also is a good target for satire.

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.”

Next, we have a contribution from Babylon Bee.

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?

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