The term socialist got tossed around a lot in the recent presidential campaign. But Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute says we’re already there. And both major political parties are responsible for the deed.
Reading the news has been exciting lately. Hardly a day passes without the announcement of some new government initiative to save the world. Bail out the mortgage lenders; bail out the big insurance company; bail out the banks; bail out the money-market funds; bail out the commercial-paper sellers; bail out the depositors in belly-up banks; bail out the automobile companies; bail out the deadbeats who didn’t make their mortgage payments when they came due. When the Treasury bumps up against its borrowing limits, and interest rates begin to rise on its bonds, bail it out, too, by having the Fed flood the world’s credit markets with new reserves created by nothing more than a snap of its electronic finger. Who knows what industry, special-interest group, or noisy whiners bloc will be bailed out next? With the Fed standing ready to inflate without limit, the festivities need never end.
Of course, our rulers assure us that they will defend the taxpayers’ interest like pit bulls. Why, just recently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in which they declared, “We must safeguard the interest of American taxpayers [and also, they continued] protect the hundreds of thousands of automobile workers and retirees, stop the erosion of our manufacturing base, and bolster our economy.” Whew! These dedicated public servants clearly do not intend to rest until they’ve pretty much cured all the world’s visible ills, including bad breath and flat feet. If they fail, in any event, it won’t be because they were too timid about throwing the taxpayers’ money at the problems.
All of which raises the eternal question, have we become a communist country yet? Yes, I know you probably think this question is silly, but I intend to treat it with the seriousness it deserves in the light of past, present, and likely future government actions. To ensure that I do not adopt an irrelevant or tendentious set of criteria in my inquiry, I will consider the question with reference to the list of ten measures that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels presented in the Manifesto of the Communist Party as “pretty generally applicable” for the establishment of communism “in the most advanced countries.” In the following text, I reproduce each of Marx and Engels’s points verbatim in bold font (from the 1955 edition of Samuel H. Beer), followed by my own evaluation or commentary.
Higgs is right. Alas, we seem to have hit the utopia of socialism long ago.
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{ 20 comments }
Excellent Post!
You think fairness and justice to the poor is socialism? We have RICH people socialism and BENDOVERISM for the poor. The rich have put us in the horrible shape we are in today with their corruption in business and their violations of human rights and dignity. If the rich is going to get it, it's only fair that the poor get some too. That's what Jesus would do…
Ah yes, Nancy, the RICH made everyone go out and mortage their lives. All of the CREDIT that everyone bought products under are teh fault of the rich. The guys who provide the jobs MADE you get VISA's, American Expresses, Master Cards and buy the vast majority of products on credit.The government did the same. I am not saying that Wall Street CEO's are without fault. But the vast amount of blame lies in lazy Americans not wanting to produce, but rather get everything handed to them on a platter. Hence the dissolution of any form of solid lending practices by the lending institutions.Socialism means taking from those that have and giving to those who do not. We are a semi-socialist state as it is. The mess we brought upon ourselves is driving the idiots in charg to make it worse by trying o spend money they don't have on the problem. Watch in a couple of years. Google the 1930's and 1970's to see the history that we are dooming ourselves to repeat.
What violations of human rights?
Calling it "justice and fairness" is only the left's way of making socialism sound more acceptable. Just because the term 'socialism' has a "pejorative connotation" does not make it "useless". Is it 'just or fair' to take away from someone who has saved and invested just to be able to give it to someone who chose not to do that? Why is it fair to take someone's wealth just because they have more?I consider myself solidly middle class now, although I was dirt poor growing up. However, poor people might consider me 'rich'. Who is going to define what 'rich' is? Why should the government or anyone else, for that matter, decide how much is 'fair' to earn or save?I know people who have worked hard and become rich. I have not seen ANY corruption in their businesses nor any violations of human rights. What I did see was people who were at the edge of bankruptcy for YEARS before they made their businesses successful. Many times their employees got paid and they got nothing. Do I resent that they are now rich? No, I am happy for them EVEN THOUGH I have much less than they.What is happening now is the stoking of class envy all in the name of 'justice and fairness'. All socialism manages to do long term is to spread the poverty amongst all. Will that make those who are less well off happy? What a sad commentary that those who have chosen an easier, albeit poorer route, are only happy when other, harder working people, lose their wealth.
Sean, I think Nancy's point was a bit broader than the current “credit crisis.”
The term socialist is just about useless in serious discussions of justice and fairness, simply because it currently has a pejorative connotation. Serious, as opposed to rabble rousing, partisan demagoguery, of the Palin sort.
The real question is justice and fairness, not “are we socialist yet?”
So the rich people in the U.S. are the ones responsible for Abu Ghraib and the like? Ridiculous.
Do you consider taking from those who have and giving to those who have not in the form of free, compulsory public education to be “socialism”? Since you were dirt poor growing up, I assume you didn't pay for your own schooling. How far would you have gone if you didn't learn to read or write?
Perhaps you consider social security to be “socialism”. It's net effect certianly is to take from those who have and give to those who have not. Yet most Americans (most, as in “you're considered a nut if you don't) consider social security to be a fundimental entitlement and an asspect of social justice that they will not give up for ideological considerations.
I think it IS far better to set aside idelogical name calling and to focus on what would a fair, just and equitable distribution of the results of our collective efforts be.
Since we are considering the idea that America's government is socialist, consider for a moment the idea that it might be plutocratic. If so, blaming the rich for the human rights violations of the last seven to eight years might not be such a fanciful notion.
And while I recognize that the rich are not libertarians, libertarians do spend a, shall we say, inordinate amount of time and energy defending the rich. Someone who is concerned about plutocracy and the injustice it fosters might feel quite justified in dismissing libertarians as being nothing more than appoligists for the excesses of the Bush administration.
Spending so much time worrying about how to cut yet another percentage point off the marginal tax rate gives libertarianism a bad reputation.
We now have another voice telling us that the term "socialism" may be becoming useless. George Will writes: "…if conservatives call all such spreading by government 'socialism,' that becomes a classification that no longer classifies: It includes almost everything… Hyperbole is not harmless; careless language bewitches the speaker's intelligence. An falsely shouting 'socialism!' in a crowded theater such as Washington causes an epidemic of yawning."Yawwwwwwwn.
who gives a rat's ass what it's called?it's not working. it's failing rather spectacularly.and here we are trying the same thing over and over again, all the while expecting a different result. some old guy once cited such a thing as the definition of insanity.so you're right. it's not socialism.it's insanity.
and public schooling has such a perfect, spotless record, right?
If you view the US as a plutocracy, one would could easily come to that conclusion. And the idea that the US is a plutocracy has as much, if not more, merit than the idea that it is socialistic.
Not necessarily the right way to look at it, but not so ridiculous either.
Public schooling has the most spectacularly successful record of any and all social programs ever conceived by mankind, in all of history. For four or five generations now my family has been the benifacators of this wonderful gift from the American people, and I support it unconditionaly as one of the true foundations of our freedom, wealth and happiness.
Thanks Cori! I think your right – focusing on “what it's called” is counterproductive. Looking at the situation without the filters and preconceptions of ideology may help us make better decisions.
Alan are a professional blogger from the ObamaBorg? I find it amusing that Alan, an avowed 'collectivist' aka socialist has infested this site with 50% of the responses being refutations and support for his collectivist viewpoint.
A professional blogger? Nope. I have a real job.FYI, I consider myself to be an individualist and a principled defender of liberty.
comrad, please!!!!!!!!!!!
Citizen! You are Welcome! COMRATS to you!(BTW, COMRAD is milSpeak for Computer Aided Design. COMRADE, which you might have intended, is Computer Aided Design Environment. I know. I do that sort of thing.)
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