What are Communist States?

I recently read a short blog post by a good friend and fellow libertarian (can be found here) about Communist States. Now let me just say that any anti-Communist and anti-Socialist rhetoric is greatly appreciated, but I have to do a bit of clearing up here. The term "Communist State" is actually a misnomer and if we, the liberals and libertarians, can clear it up for everyone, I believe we will be much more successful in converting others to our cause. So what is the problem with this phrase? I mean, hasn't everyone been using it for decades? Yes, but they have been using it erroneously. There can never be such a thing as a Communist State by definition, because Communism is a stateless ideology. Now this may sound like I am exonerating Communism - this could not be further from the truth. I consider Communism to be collectivist, deadly, and most importantly of all - unnatural. What we have to start speaking about are SOCIALIST STATES. Marx's point (a very stupid and ridiculous claim on the face of it) was that Communism will come only after the state withers away. This process could take hundreds of years. We had live under the dictatorship of the proletariat (i.e. in a totalitarian collectivist socialist state) until all people who bear the birthmark of capitalism are dead. Communism was only good for the "new socialist man of tomorrow". Modern man could not live under Communism, that much Marx was correct about. So let me say here again for emphasis: States like the Soviet Union or modern Cuba are Socialist States, not Communist States. The concept of Communism in itself is not bad, just Utopian. It is impossible. And trying actively to achieve it can only lead to mass murder and death of billions.
Now why should we argue this way? Most people would actually say that labeling certain states "communist" is a good strategy because communism is still such a hated ideology in the West. But think of it this way: Is it a good idea to call someone a murderer just because you personally don't like them and want others not to like them also? Of course not. This is the kind of emotional rhetoric militant NeoConservatives engage in. It is disturbing and irrational. Also there is another problem with it. If we label communism and communist states as evil, we open the field for socialists of all kinds to proclaim their ideology as good. After all they can say: "Hey, communism was bad back in Russia, but socialism is good, look at Sweden". This is why we must let people know that the Soviet Union was in fact socialist. Socialists of every kind, even social-democrats, are actually in line with the Soviet Leninists. They are Marxist Utopians and must be perceived and treated as such.

The problem of socialists and communists was never their sincerity or their morality, rather it was their religious ignorance of the world around them. They continued plowing through the masses with their ideology, killing millions, without regard for how life works. I have written multiple times that I myself am a Utopian to some extent - every Spencerian Social Darwinist is. But there are many kinds of Utopianism, one that sees a world as it is, and another (the leftist) which does not see the world at all. As Vladimir Ulyanov (Comrade Lenin) himself wrote: "man’s consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but creates it". Such men as him are not born monsters, it is the cruel and twisted logic of socialism that makes them into mass murdering beasts...

Usury is Exploitation?! Give me a break Socialists!

I often laugh in the faces of socialists. Not because I hope to insult or demean them, but simply because the stuff that comes out of their mouths is so ridiculous. Recently I have been following a very interesting anarchist blog and while I agree with the main premise of this lefty-anarchist philosophy (rejection of arbitrary authority), I still can't help laughing at the absurdities I sometimes find written there. One such thing the collectivists have always ranted about is the charging of interest - the mythical SIN OF USURY. From what I understand lefties oppose interest because of their silly belief in the (I apologize for the swear-words coming up) LABOR THEORY OF VALUE. They say that it is immoral for one man to loan a thing to another and demand payment for it because while one labors over the property, the other simply gains without performing any function. I have two critiques of this silly argument, a moral one and a practical one.
Let's start with the practical one because it immediately shows the absurdity of any anti-interest theory. Let us assume we live in a world where interest may never be charged. In other words, no one may charge anyone else for lending them something. First off all current rent agreements would become not only null-and-void, but subject to some kind of penalty. For example my parents, who rent their house from a landlord, would be left homeless. The landlord, meanwhile, would have an empty house for which he has no need... I would also be considered an immoral person for using a credit card on which interest is charged monthly if I do not make a prompt payment. I really don't understand how people would cooperate in such a society. Personally I would not lend things to strangers unless they paid me and I do not expect anyone to act differently. So why should anything ever be lent out? On a small scale maybe this could be solved by creating some kind of communist tribe-unit, but lack of usury is utterly incompatible with any economy of scale. Furthermore, it is important to point out that most influential historical figures who promoted the usury-free society did so on religious grounds (Martin Luther or Adam Smith, for example).
Now the moral critique. What right does anybody have to tell me what agreements I can or cannot have with someone if they have no effect on a third party?! Again, this is socialist meddling - moral crusaders do this all the time, whether Statist or Anarchist. If I voluntarily agree with my bank that the rules of using my credit card are such as they are, nobody has the right to impose their will upon me or the bank. Doing so would be tyrannical and simply evil because it constitutes aggression. How many times do I have to tell you people - LIVE IN YOUR LITTLE COMMUNE, KIBBUTZ, OR WHATEVER, BUT KEEP YOUR MITTS OUT OF MY PERSONAL LIFE. I simply do not care about you people, so why do you have to care about me? Any interference in a transaction between consenting parties cannot be morally justified in any way. This is why we libertarians oppose anti-drug laws, for example. Nobody has the right to enforce them, it's as simple as that. Why do we not ban boxers from fighting in a ring? Because they do harm to one another VOLUNTARILY.

And I promise you all an absolutely smashing critique of the ('scuse me again for the bad language) labor theory of value coming soon.

I am very impersonal in my criticism of socialists because I simply do not care what such people do with their lives as long as they do not impose anything on me. This is why socialist-anarchist are a strange people... What do they want? Do they want to attack me to prevent me from setting up perfectly voluntary arrangements with others? I do not care about them - I care only about what they may do to me. As George Reisman put it "the Idiots of socialism are slaves, but they are no one's property and therefore no one's loss". At least he capitalized Idiots. Amen to that.

So much for Socialism being 'humane'...

What is the main criticism people level at us, the good old capitalists? Well, for starters, we are supposedly just purely bad people. We selfishly want to exploit others in this dog-eat-dog world of ours. The weak who are not useful to us should perish - they are unnecessary and only a burden. Of course, this is exactly the opposite of what characterizes capitalist society. Selfish motives might very well propel most of the relationships involved, after all, as Adam Smith described, "it is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest". But people prosper under this system. The amount of labor allotted to each individual over the years has fallen dramatically. We are living in a richer, more healthy society. Charity has always blossomed under such conditions. It is no accident that the largest average per capita amount given to charity was present in the hay day of the capital of capitalism - 18th Century United States. Today, however, it is the socialists and social-democrats ('liberals' in the US) who claim to be representatives of the good. Capitalism is evil and must be replaced by mixed economy (a type of economic fascism) or outright socialism. Their policies lead the the exact opposite effects that capitalist ones do. Charitable contributions plunge (after all welfare and such things are now entitlements). Productivity is lowered which means, ceteris paribus, the amount of hours people work is increased. In fact socialism is the system which claims to give people the opportunity to improve and grow, not just work all the time. The exact opposite is true. People in a real socialist society are forced to work. Most theorists of modern socialism have repeatedly stated that those who are useless and do not work must be eliminated. I thought that was the criticism these people's successors are levelling at capitalism? The greatest inspiration for today's many powerful socialists and economic fascists was probably Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (a.k.a. Comrade Lenin), a mass murderer and revolutionary. The Democratic Party of the United States in many ways resembles in structure and policy the old Leninist ideals of centralization and unlimited powers of the democratic majority. Let me just remind these deluded individuals that the motto of their great hero was "He who does not work, neither shall he eat". And what is the incentive to work in a country with 100% tax rates? If not a carrot, then a stick must be used. Work or die. That is the socialist creed. I still fail to see the difference between this system and simple slavery.

Speaking of socialism and evil men, I have to mention George Bernard Shaw. He once said: "I, who said forty years ago that we should have had Socialism already but for the Socialists, am quite willing to drop the name if dropping it will help me to get the thing." From this we might learn that 'they' are out there and 'they' have many names. They are men with no virtue and no honor, only a lust for power. Maybe dear old Mr.McCarthy wasn't wrong back in the 1950's? Who can blame a man for being paranoid when he is surrounded by evil men who here call themselves socialists, there democrats, elsewhere liberals, or social-democrats, or greens, or nationalists, or internationalists, or even (what nerve they have!) conservatives.

Modern Marxism in Disguise

Everyone knows that the most basic premise of Marxist theory is the assumption that class struggle exists and two groups of people emerge from it: the exploiters and the exploited. In classical Marxist dogma these were the bourgeoisie and the proletariat - striving against one another. In modern times this has already been recognized as pure idiocy (yes, this is the technical term for Marx's theories) by anyone who has a functional brain. The evil Marxists, however, have not given up yet. They know the theories of their idol (whom Yuri Maltsev aptly called 'a genius of evil') don't hold water, so they have to apply them to all sort of different phenomena and hope they stick somewhere. Usually this is done when at least two groups are said to 'antagonize' each other. The two most common applications of Marxist theory today are the theory of racial struggle and gender struggle. Apparently the races hate each other and so do the genders. Believe it or not, most people in the neo-liberal movement in America today (what is called the social-democratic movement in Europe) have more in common with Robert Mugabe than they do with the old idealist of liberty such as the American Founding Fathers. There is an easy litmus test by which we can tell socialists (Marxists) from normal members of society. Socialists will always emphasize some sort of struggle or threat and where non exists, they will just make one up. This has not changed from the time of Marx and Engels, through Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, to today's inheritors of this Marxist legacy. It is only the focus that has changed. Isn't it curious how the liberals are always the ones to point out racial, economic, or gender disparities within groups? Race, socioeconomic status, or gender questions are not something Classical liberals or today's libertarians concern themselves with. Talking about race issues is actually a way to perpetuate them because it causes people to notice the most minute and silly details in such relations. There can be no doubt there is less racism today than there was one hundred years ago, but if we listened to 'them' we would think today's world is inhabited by racists and poor discriminated groups. I do not buy into such rhetoric because I consider myself as having progressed beyond them. Let primitives discuss what they will, but us, the natural aristocrats, should keep at an arm's length at least. Propaganda will always be propaganda and Newspeak will always be Newspeak, but giving these people power will only let them implement their sick schemes into society. Marxist will always be racists and let's let them be so, as long as they stay out of our hair.

Let's ignore them, stand up for ourselves, and say as loudly and proudly as John Randolph once said: "I am an aristocrat. I love liberty, I hate equality."

Socialism, Sensationalism, and Scaremongering

The socialists have done it again! Mr. José Manuel Durão Barroso, the President of the European Commission (i.e. the EU Politburo), has announced that there will be an investigation and "emergency talks" about the volcanic ash cloud over Europe, which at present is hampering air travel all around the continent. This is of course just a bunch of nonsense and another way to take our money and put it to their ridiculous uses. The EU have to be seen doing something about everything, a tactic well employed by Communist regimes in the former Eastern Block as well as Fascist governments (Mussolini famously declared "battle" and "war" on every problem he attempted to solve). Thus they try to keep us all scared. First of Global Warming (now rebranded "climate change" - since there is no warming...), then Swine Flu (the UK government wasted billions of pounds on unused flu shots), now - THE VOLCANIC CLOUD! The Earth attacks! Fire, ruin, airplanes falling out of the sky at will of the mighty beast! The truth is that over 99% of the cloud is water vapour from the melting glacier and the particles thrown up by the eruption, although some can be harmful to jet engines, are mostly miniscule and not dangerous at all. However, when I watched the BBC News last night I got the impression that the end of air travel in Europe was imminenet and that any airplane would crash minutes after take-off after being overwhelemed by dangerous fumes. If that is the case, then how come the airport in Reykjavík, the capital city of ICELAND(!), is functioning normally? Also, Ireland, the country closest to the eruption (aside from Iceland itself) has ceased all restrictions on air travel. I find this whole business highly reminiscient of the previous scares which proved to be hoaxes. The governments (both EU and national) have to be seen as protecting people. Meanwhile, they are causing massive damage to the economy - what a time to be doing that!

There is no better time than this to remind ourselves of a great saying by a famous man, Stefan Kisielewski - "Socialism is the system under which people bravely combat problems not present under any other system!" (My own transaltion) He couldn't be more right! Ash cloud or not, we need to be fighting something, eh Comrades? And I thought Don Quixote was a fool to battle windmills!

Socialist Economy vs Normal Economy

There is one key difference between the two - their final goal and objective.

In a normal (free, voluntary, capitalist) economy, the goal is to reduce the overall amount of labour. In other words, capitalists want to completely eliminate useless labour and also decrease necessary labour as much as possible. This is done through elimination of inefficiency and reduction in costs of production or increasing output (through mechanization or other means). Thus time people spend working decreases and they have more time for leisure and other activities (because they are so productive!). For the best detailed discussion of this phenomenon I recommend parts of Ludwig von Mises's Human Action.

Meanwhile the goal of the socialist (coercive, centrally-planned, governmental) economy is to create jobs and keep people employed. This is probably the second most absurd notion in socialism (second only to the phenomenon of "Robin Hoodery" - see here). Socialism achieves its goal by "creating" useless jobs. This is why socialist take-over is always combined with a huge increase in bureaucratic positions and functions which are completely unnecessary in a normal world. In the USSR and other socialist nations of the Eastern Block bureaucratic governmental committees oversaw everything from the manufacture of spoons to the recipes in cook books - literally everything. Socialist governments also tend to fund economically unviable ventures as long as they provide jobs, thus the creation of so-called "public works programs". Thus socialists make everyone perpetually perform repetitive and dull activities which serve no real purpose, and then claim to be saviours of the economy. For an example of such socialist action I highly recommend reading Bastiat's Candlestick makers' petition here.

With all this well known and documented, can somebody tell me why so many people still trust socialism to be good for anyone?

Welcome to the World of Socialism America!

The US House of Representatives passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Yuppie, Obamacare!) the day before yesterday. At least none of the Republicans embarrassed themselves by voting for it, and it was close - 219 evil votes against 212 good votes. I say evil because socialism is an evil beast. Now guaranteeing a so-called "public option" insurance is nothing, but a way to get rid of private insurance in the long term. Luckily America might become bankrupt before 2014 (the year this whole thing is supposed to kick in) and so all this might still be gone with the wind soon.
There are a number of problems with this legislation (I am trying to ignore the fact that ALL legislation is ALWAYS evil) most important of which are:

1. It forces people who don't want to buy health insurance to pay for it.
2. It covers people who are too stupid to buy health insurance, not only the ones that can't afford it.
3. It will eventually lead to the end of privately run insurance and turn the USA into another socialized medicine state.

Since point 1 and 3 are pretty self-explanatory and everyone with any respect for human rights will agree are bad things (1 is a form of slavery and 3 tremendously reduces quality of life; there are thousands of articles already written about this), I will only discuss point 2.
Let's use a real life example:
There are three men. Two of them have $1000 and the third has nothing. The first decides to buy a health insurance policy or to save the money in case of a medical emergency, and the second decides to buy a 50" TV. The third has no money so he does nothing. Now if all three caught some potentially fatal disease, the first man would most likely be taken care of and survive, while the second and third would have little chance of survival (beyond charity). In a normal capitalism world, the two latter men would most likely be taken care of anyway because charity would be bountiful, but let's suppose that the charities only have enough money to save one of them. If the charities then look at the situation, they will most likely choose to save the third man (the poor one) because he had no means of saving himself. The second man (i.e. the idiot who has a very high time preference schedule) would in that scenario have to die. At the end of the day two men would be alive and both left with no money while another would be dead. Also, the health insurance company of the first man and the charity of the third man poorer by whatever cost it took to cure them (say $5000).
But suppose the exact same situation took place in a state which forces people to engage in socialized medical practice. All three men would be covered fully by the national health service provider. The entire cost of treatment for their disease (say $5000) would be payed out of the national pool of money reserved for health care. And let's assume the insurance premium was the same as in a capitalist world ($1000 per person) even though in socialist economies it would likely be much higher. If this situation was resolved all three men would remain alive at the end (I am not taking into account the chronic inefficiency and unethicality of socialized health care systems which have a high probability of not saving the three men), but the country would be $15000 poorer! Of course it would have the $2000 that was paid in premiums by the first and second men (the second man now HAS to pay), but the third man is still not paying. Instead the remaining money ($13000) is a subsidy that these three get from ALL OTHER TAXPAYERS. It is therefore a forced redistribution of wealth. Also, importantly, the second man has now survived! Despite being a short-sighted individual he still has a chance to do damage to the entire society! Moreover, man number 1 is likely to realize his responsibility does not aid him in any way and will become increasingly short-sighted himself, as will all their offspring and people they influence.

Thus socialism leads to the process Decivilization - it subsidizes fools and taxes the frugal citizens in order to do it.
Therefore the issue here is not only that, as James Madison famously said, "charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government" but also the deeper problem of decivilization.

Today I will end with a quote from Herbert Spencer: "The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools."

The Purpose of Freedom for Christians

I have heard many people accuse Christians of being as bad a socialists, the Church being a sort of proto-socialist organization. Most notorious in this regard (as being accusers) are followers of Ayn Rand. As brilliant as Rand was, I never understood her constant rants against religion and Christianity in particular. Another wing of critics stems from people like Mikhail Gorbachev, who is famous for saying: "Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.". There is a huge difference between being an altruist and forcing people to be altruists. Christians try to do the former, socialists the latter. But this is a huge topic - to be discussed later.
For now let's focus on the issue of why Christians need freedom and liberty. For a Christian (I speak from my own, Catholic, perspective) doing good things is essential; it is a requirement of salvation in the afterlife. "Doing good" means helping others and following Christian dogma, such as the Ten Commandments and other Church laws. In order to do these things, however, one must have the free will to do them. If someone is forced to do a good thing (like giving a poor man a dollar, for example), then that person is not really responsible for doing the good deed as it was mandatory (i.e. the forced socialist way). By the same logic, if someone is forced to do an evil thing (to shoot someone, for instance), they are also not responsible for the killing. Therefore in a socialist society being a Christian has no value. If you pay your taxes and they are used to feed the poor and house the homeless, it is still not a good deed - because you were forced to pay the taxes in the first place. For a free man life is a test of his virtues and values; he can use all his faculties to the ends he thinks are best. For a slave, however, life is just a toil. A slave spends his days eeking out a subsistance and thinking of ways to get more material goods from his master.
A socialist society is a society of slaves.
A Christian society is a society of free men.

Let me end with a brilliant quote from Sir Francis Galton: "A really intelligent nation might be held together by far stronger forces than are derived from the purely gregarious instincts. A nation need not be a mob of slaves, clinging to one another through fear, and for the most part incapable of self-government, and begging to be led; but it might consist of vigorous self-reliant men, knit to one another by innumerable ties, into a strong, tense, and elastic organization."

Obamacare polls - Democracy at work!

Every couple months we get new poll results about how Americans react to the Obama/Democrat healthacare plan. First the people seemed to like it, then they seemed to hate it, now it's around 50/50... My question is: Who cares what the people think?! If people like something and want it, it doesn't automatically mean that it is good! Unfortunately the US is now a prime example of democracy at work - mob rule has won in Washington, D.C. Appareantly nobody told these people ("these people" mainly refers to the Democratic Party Politburo: Nancy "Pom-pom" Pelosi, Joe "Bobblehead" Biden, and Barack "The Big Red" Obama) that democracy was considered primitive over 2000 years ago, and socialism joined it with the collapse of the USSR. I'd have nothing against the Democrats organizing their own little Sovetskiy Soyuz someplace, but I feel quite sorry for the hundreds of millions of Americans who might be forced into this healthcare serfdom. In the case of democracy, even Aristotle concluded it was an unworkable scam - and he lived only a few generations after the abominable system was introduced in Athens. Incidentally, few people know that Socrates was one of the first to "die by democracy" - a majority of people voted he should die. In a real State of Law (best represented in the form of a Monarchy) it doesn't matter how many people want something done - if it is against the Law, it will not happen. This is best discussed by Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 pamphlet titled simply The Law (I highly recommend it!). And therein lies the rub! What's the point of polls on such ridiculous subjects as Obamacare? Socialized medicine violates every moral principle in conservative and liberal ethics! Mainly, it violates the most important principle in conservative and liberal thought - private property rights. Polls are just another way for politicians to get a feel at which absolutely immoral reform they should have a crack at next time Congress/Parliament/Legislature is in session.




Frédéric Bastiat - The Best of the French