Socialism in Practice: The Lethal Laboratory

By Gary North

What is the longest-running socialist experiment? What has its success been?

If someone asked you to defend the idea that socialism has failed, what would you offer as your example?

Where did modern socialism begin?

In America.

That's right: in the land of the free and the home of the braves. On Indian reservations.

They were invented to control adult warriors. They had as a goal to keep the native population in poverty and impotent.

Did the system work? You bet it did.

Has the experiment been a failure? On the contrary, it has been a success.

When was the last time you heard of a successful Indian uprising?

Are the people poor? The poorest in America.

Are they on the dole? Of course.

Last year, the US Department of Agriculture allocated $21 million to provide subsidized electricity to residents on the reservations whose homes are the most distant from jobs and opportunities. You can read about this here. This will keep them poor. Tribal power means tribal impotence.

The tribes are dependent. They will stay dependent. That was what the program was designed to achieve.

For some reason, textbooks do not offer a page or two on the corruption, the bureaucratization, and the multigenerational poverty created by tribal-run socialism. Here we have a series of government-run social laboratories. How successful have they been? Where are reservations that have systematically brought people out of poverty?

The next one will be the first.

Workers' Paradises

The Soviet Union lasted as a socialist workers' paradise from 1917 until 1991. As a direct result of that experiment, at least 30 million Russians died. It may have been twice that. China's experiment was shorter: 1949 to 1978. Perhaps 60 million Chinese died.

The system failed to deliver the promised goods. I can think of no topic more suitable for a class in economics than a discussion of the failure of socialism. The same is true of a course in modern world history. A course in political science should cover this failure in detail.

They don't, of course. They do not begin with the fundamental challenge to… (Read on)

Source: Mises.org

Bauer and Lenin: The Problem of Economic Calculation

By Ludwig von Mises (written in 1920)

 

Since recent events helped socialist parties to obtain power in Russia, Hungary, Germany and Austria, and have thus made the execution of a socialist nationalization program a topical issue, Marxist writers have themselves begun to deal more closely with the problems of the regulation of the socialist commonwealth. But even now they still cautiously avoid the crucial question, leaving it to be tackled by the despised "Utopians." They themselves prefer to confine their attention to what is to be done in the immediate future; they are forever drawing up programs of the path to Socialism and not of Socialism itself. The only possible conclusion from all these writings is that they are not even conscious of the larger problem of economic calculation in a socialist society.

 

To Otto Bauer the nationalization of the banks appears the final and decisive step in the carrying through of the socialist nationalization program. If all banks are nationalized and amalgamated into a single central bank, then its administrative board becomes

 

“the supreme economic authority, the chief administrative organ of the whole economy. Only by nationalization of the banks does society obtain the power to regulate its labor according to a plan, and to distribute its resources rationally among the various branches of production, so as to adapt them to the nation's needs.”

 

Bauer is not discussing the monetary arrangements which will prevail in the socialist commonwealth after the completion of the nationalization of the banks. Like other Marxists he is trying to show how simply and obviously the future socialist order of society will evolve from the conditions prevailing in a developed capitalist economy. "It suffices to transfer to the nation's representatives the power now exercised by bank shareholders through the Administrative Boards they elect, "in order to socialize the banks and thus to lay the last brick on the edifice of socialism. Bauer leaves his readers completely ignorant of the fact that the nature of the banks is entirely changed in the process of nationalization and amalgamation into one central bank. Once the banks merge into a single bank, their essence is wholly transformed; they are then in a position to issue credit without any limitation. In this fashion the monetary system as we know it today disappears of itself.

 

When in addition the single central bank is nationalized in a society, which is otherwise already completely socialized, market dealings disappear and all exchange transactions are abolished. At the same time the Bank ceases to be a bank, its specific functions are extinguished, for there is no longer any place for it in such a society.

 

This is excerpted from Economic Planning in the Socialist Commonwealth.  Read or download the entire book at the AntiMarxists Internet Archive e-library.

 

Image and book courtesy of the Ludwig von Mises Institute

Reactionary Socialism

By Ludwig von Mises

 

From the very beginnings of the socialist movement and the endeavors to revive the interventionist policies of the precapitalistic ages, both socialism and interventionism were utterly discredited in the eyes of those conversant with economic theory. But the ideas of the revolutionaries and reformers found approval with the immense majority of ignorant people exclusively driven by the most powerful human passions of envy and hatred.

 

The social philosophy of the Enlightenment that paved the way for the realization of the liberal program — economic freedom, consummated in the market economy (capitalism), and its constitutional corollary, representative government — did not suggest the annihilation of the three old powers: the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the churches. The European liberals aimed at the substitution of the parliamentary monarchy for royal absolutism, not at the establishment of republican government. They wanted to abolish the privileges of the aristocrats, but not to deprive them of their titles, their escutcheons and their estates. They were eager to grant to everybody freedom of conscience and to put an end to the persecution of dissenters and heretics, but they were anxious to give to all churches and denominations perfect freedom in the pursuit of their spiritual objectives. Thus the three great powers of the ancien régime were preserved. One might have expected that princes, aristocrats and clergymen who indefatigably professed their conservatism would be prepared to oppose the socialist attack upon the essentials of Western civilization. After all, the harbingers of socialism did not shrink from disclosing that under socialist totalitarianism no room would be left for what they called the remnants of tyranny, privilege, and superstition.

 

However, even with these privileged groups resentment and envy were more intense than cool reasoning. They virtually joined hands with the socialists disregarding the fact that socialism aimed also at the confiscation of their holdings and that there cannot be any religious freedom under a totalitarian system… (Read more)

 

Source: Mises.org

Intellectual Roots of Terror

By James Ostrowski

As zebras are fascinated by lions, libertarians are fascinated by communists, their polar opposites and sworn enemies for the last 150 years. If one believes that society should function with an absolute minimum of governmental coercion, one is curious to know the results of a philosophy which places its faith in the maximum possible use of governmental coercion, force, and violence, to achieve its goals. If communism worked, we libertarians would be forced to check our premises and watch our backs.

Can the laboratory of communism also shed light on the viability of a related political philosophy, which also relies on centralized governmental coercion to achieve its goals: modern liberalism? The communists did all at once what stealthy left-liberals apparently intend to do piece by piece while we sleep. We just lived through a century in which liberals enacted several recommendations of the Communist Manifesto and transformed a night-watchman state into a welfare/warfare state with a continual flow of "progressive" legislation and various "Democrat wars" and crusades with the result that no one in my law school class in 1983 could identify, in response to Professor Henry Mark Holzer's query, any aspect of life that was not in some way regulated or controlled by the state. Seventeen years later, are they through?

Has liberalism closed up shop? Will they ever be through? Not until they have established an egalitarian utopia where virtually all responsibility for living has passed from the individual to the state. In the liberal utopia, if I may pilfer Paddy Chayefsky's words, "all necessities [will be] provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused."

If you think I exaggerate, consider that liberals and communists share five critical… (Read the full article)

Source: Mises.org

Introducing Jeffrey Tucker!

Jeffrey A. Tucker is the editorial vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a think tank that espouses the Austrian School of economics. He is the current webmaster for the institute's website, Mises.org. Tucker is also an adjunct scholar with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and an Acton University faculty member.

 

He is well known for his many video interviews of various authors, scholars, and economists of the world (google search Mises Media and you're bound to run into his interviews).  He has written thousands of articles and has also published two best-selling books, Bourbon For Breakfast and It's A Jetson's World.  These books are charming, provide valuable insights on modern-day free market and government affairs, and are a lot of fun to read.

 

The AMIA is proud to add Jeffrey Tucker to the e-library.  Visit the Jeffrey Tucker Internet Archive to read his books in PDF format or to download for FREE his bestselling books on EPUB format for Kindle, Nook, iPad 2, and other e-reader devices.

The AMIA now offers FREE e-books!

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We have just added:

-The Bastiat Collection, including Frederic Bastiat's most important piece, "That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen"

-Karl Marx and the Close of His System by Egen Bohm-Bawerck

-Out Of Step by Frank Chodorov

-The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality by Ludwig Von Mises

-Planned Chaos by Ludwig Von Mises

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