socialism

The Triumph of Liberalism Over Socialism

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , ,

The Economist has a great piece on France’s current socialist government and the scandal of wealth that has recently erupted there. From the report:

Now the Socialist president’s new disclosure rules reveal that seven of his ministers, including his prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, are millionaires.

The French are discreet about money and flinch at ostentatious displays of wealth. So the new rules have prompted much discomfort, with ministers given only a week to declare their wealth. On April 15th Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister, who comes from a family of art dealers, duly declared over €6m ($7.9m) of assets, including a flat in Paris worth €2.7m and two country houses. Michèle Delaunay, minister for the elderly, reported €5.2m of assets, including two properties in Bordeaux and two houses in different south-west resorts. Michel Sapin, the labour minister, declared three country houses, some large tracts of farmland and a flat in Paris, for a total of over €2m. Even Mr Ayrault, a former schoolteacher, is a millionaire, with two properties to his name.

Other details raised eyebrows. Cécile Duflot, the Green housing minister who makes much of taking public transport, owns two cars, neither of them electric. Mr Fabius, despite his millions, has a €30,000 overdraft. Arnaud Montebourg, the left-wing industry minister, owns three properties and a Charles Eames armchair worth €4,300. French Socialist ministers turn out to be keen property investors; almost none holds shares.

Mr Hollande hastily devised the new rules after his former budget minister, Jérôme Cahuzac, had confessed to lying about a secret foreign bank account. Until now, only the president had to publish his wealth. Mr Hollande’s 2012 declaration included two flats in Cannes and a villa nearby, valued in all at nearly €1.2m, just under the threshold at which France’s annual wealth tax kicks in.

Now the president wants to extend the disclosure rules to all of France’s deputies. This will be tough. Even Claude Bartolone, the Socialist parliamentary speaker, denounced the exercise as “voyeurism” and expressed fears of the advent of “paparazzi democracy”. And Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a fiery hard-left European deputy not bound by the rules, mocked them by revealing on his blog his height and weight, and stating that he owned no paintings, cars, yachts or horses—and did not dye his hair.

Be sure to check out the graphic, too. The reality of the world today is that socialism is truly dead and done. Something else – equally reactionary – will arise in its place to challenge the liberal order’s peace and prosperity, but for the next few decades the world will know nothing but relative calm as it enjoys the benefits brought about by individualism and world trade.

When a new collectivism arrives to challenge liberalism, you can be sure that it will look very much like the collectivisms of old. Do you know what collectivism looks like?

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , , , , , , ,
  1. Superior Mayan Engineering.
  2. Gary North: The Libertarian Taliban.
  3. How Much Does the Market Organization of Economic Life Matter?
  4. Margaret Thatcher’s Triumph.
  5. The Republic of Baseball.

Hugo Chavez, Fascist/Socialist (Same Thing) Dead at 58

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , ,

Hugo Chavez, the portly, socialist dictator from Venezuela, died from cancer at the ripe old age of 58. My only lament is that I will probably never get to piss on his grave.

His rule was fairly typical for a Leftist regime: assaults on free speech and the free press, diminished civil liberties, picking and choosing winners and losers in the private sector, strong ties to the military, etc. etc. From the New York Times:

At the same time, he was determined to hold onto and enhance his power. He grew obsessed with changing Venezuela’s laws and regulations to ensure that he could be re-elected indefinitely and become, indeed, a caudillo, able to rule by decree at times. He stacked his government with generals, colonels and majors, drawing inspiration from the leftist military officers who ruled Peru and Panama in the 1970s.

[…]

He began describing his critics as “golpistas,” or putschists, while recasting his own failed 1992 coup as a patriotic uprising. He purged opponents from the national oil company, expropriated the land of others and imprisoned retired military officials who had dared to stand against him. The country’s political debate became increasingly poisonous, and it took its toll on the country.

Private investors, unhinged over Mr. Chávez’s nationalizations and expropriation threats, halted projects. Hundreds of thousands of scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs and others in the middle class left Venezuela, even as large numbers of immigrants from Haiti, China and Lebanon put down stakes here.

The homicide rate soared under his rule, turning Caracas into one of the world’s most dangerous cities. Armed gangs lorded over prisons, as they did in previous governments, challenging the state’s authority. Simple tasks, like transferring the title of a car, remained nightmarish odysseys eased only by paying bribes to churlish bureaucrats.

Other branches of government often bent to his will. He fired about 19,000 employees of Petróleos de Venezuela, the national oil company, in response to a strike in 2002 and 2003. In 2004, he stripped the Supreme Court of its autonomy. In legislative elections in 2010, his supporters preserved a majority in the National Assembly by gerrymandering.

All the while, Mr. Chávez rewrote the rule book on using the media to enhance his power. With “Aló Presidente” (“Hello, President”), his Sunday television program, he would speak to viewers in his booming voice for hours on end. His government ordered privately controlled television stations to broadcast his speeches.

Again, nothing too surprising here. This is what socialism will bring your society, every single time. It’s a conversation that doesn’t happen enough around the world.

What I find most surprising about his death is not that so few on the Left are willing to condemn him for his brutality (Leftists are – by and large – authoritarians who believe that the ends justify the means), but that so many Leftists really believed Chavez’s fascism represented a threat to US interests in the region.

Nothing could be further from the truth. For one thing, American policy in the region has changed markedly since the end of the Cold War. American interests in the region have largely faded into obscurity, even when it comes to the drug war (which should end tomorrow). Afghanistan, Mexico and West Africa and the Caribbean are the new fronts in the war on drugs, and overthrowing democratically-elected governments to prevent communism was sooooo 1980s. Nowadays Washington sees democratically-elected socialists coming to power as good for democracy, so long as the fascists don’t try to rewrite the rules to fit their fancies and eliminate democracy (like they’ve done in Honduras, Venezuela and, to a lesser extent, Argentina).

Chavez was nothing to Washington. Not even a pain in the ass. That uninformed Leftists continue to lie to themselves, and the like-minded tools they hang out with, should not surprise me, but alas…

Latin America has thrived since Washington has taken a softer, more respectable approach to the region. States that come under socialist influence – like Venezuela and Cuba – become pariahs on their own. Most of this has to do with the fact that militaries are involved in one way or another. Socialism has never come to power democratically.

I’m not too fond of memes, but here is one that often pops into my head when I read a Leftist’s defense of some dictator or other in some part of the world: Continue reading →

Justice for Bangladesh?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Religion , ,

From the New York Times:

The year 1971 was seminal for Bangladesh. We had been denied our right to self-rule since the Indian subcontinent was partitioned in 1947. In March of ’71, the Pakistani military, supported by China and the United States, initiated a bloody suppression of 75 million Bangladeshis. Millions fled the murderous onslaught and sought refuge in India.

Militias affiliated with the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami collaborated with the Pakistani military. They informed on, hunted out, and participated in the rape, killing and torture of ordinary citizens. They targeted hundreds of intellectuals, who were killed in cold blood.

Bangladesh is one of the poorest states on the planet. Here’s why:

Bangladesh’s original Constitution had four basic principles: nationalism, democracy, socialism and secularism.

Can you guess what happened after independence? Go ahead: guess. Or just read the whole thing (it’s short).

As of now there are massive protests going on in Bangladesh calling for revenge. While I support justice, and the Bangladeshis have suffered innumerable injustices over the past five decades, I don’t think calls for blood bodes well for the rule of law.

In other, more local, news here is a good account of the shootout that recently happened in Santa Cruz. I’m going to turn in my guns tomorrow.

Forward to the Failed Past

Fred Foldvary Current Events, History, Politics , , , , , ,

Some politicians like to use the slogan, “forward.” Sometimes it is more emphatic: forward!

But one may well ask, forward to what? Time and the current of events are always moving us forward already, so evidently the forward-seekers want to change the existing flow sideways. The slogan “forward” has often been used by those who seek greater state-imposed collectivism. As propaganda, “forward!” sounds better than “leftward!” or “towards ever greater statism!”

Several publications of socialist parties during the 1800’s were titled “Forward.” Lenin continued this tradition when he founded the Bolshevik newspaper “Vpered” (or “Vperyod”), which is “forward” in Russian. German socialists had already published the periodical “Vorwärts,” and the German national socialists continued the use of the slogan. Several communist and socialist parties still use “Forward” as the title of their publications. Continue reading →

Foldvary on the Concept of “Forward”

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics, History, Politics ,

Co-editor Fred Foldvary has an excellent post on the historical meaning of the Obama campaign’s choice of the word “Forward” as its political slogan. He writes:

The issue here is not about any political campaign, but the social concept of “forward.” Socialism is, first of all, a family of concepts. Some socialists seek greater statism, the control of society by the state. Other seek “social democracy,” whereby people vote on the major policy options. There are also socialists who seek to put the means of production, land as well as capital goods, in the hands of worker cooperatives.

Usually the “forward” thinkers seek, if not as an ultimate goal, then as the instrumental goal, a governmental control at least of the “commanding heights” of the economy: the financial system, the highways, education, medical care, and retirement pensions. Socialists seek strong controls on the remaining private production, and they also seek an equalization of wealth through a massive redistribution, with highly progressive taxation.

But the world has already experienced the results of “forward” policies in the failed economies of the old USSR, the China of the 1950s and 1960s, Cuba, North Korea, and Eastern Europe. The “forward” socialists seek a progression to the failed past. Of course they claim that their brand of socialism is different from that of the collapsed USSR, but the evidence of history reveals what was attempted in practice world-wide, even when it differs from hypothetical doctrines.

And this, too:

Instead of “forward,” a better metaphor may be “upwards.” Upward takes us to a higher place, and also to the origin of a flow such as a river. But how do we know which way is “up”?

Do read the whole thing, and what do you guys think of Dr. Foldvary’s suggestion of moving “upwards”?

Karl Marx and Special Interests

Brandon Christensen History, Politics , , , , , , , , , ,

[Note: this is an old musing of mine written back in May of 2011. I hope it is still as fresh today as it was back then.]

Karl Marx’s economic theories have long been disproved (theoretically as soon as they came out, and practically with the fall of the Berlin Wall), and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of individuals have perished under communist regimes.  People were either murdered, “relocated”, or starved to death through the attempts of Marx’s acolytes to remake man in their image.

Despite this horrific record, his theories continue to persist throughout modern political discourse.  In the United States his myths are still promoted in the academy and among the hard Left, but very few take them seriously (unfortunately).  However, in much of the rest of the world his ideas are still prevalent in everyday political action.  In order to go about showing you why this is may be the case, I am going to switch from Marxist economic theory (the labor theory of value is so out of step with reality and public discourse that I feel it is unnecessary to debunk it here) to Marxist political theory.

In fleshing out Marx’s political thought, I hope to show my loyal readers (all two of you) a couple of things: 1) that Marx’s ideas on political organization were nothing new (in fact Marxist thought on political organization is actually very old), and 2) that although Marxist ideas on political organization are not taken seriously by most Americans, the few who do take them seriously are very smart people in very high places.  Failure to recognize the subtle exposition of Marx’s political thought in public discourse could lead to dangerous consequences if we are not more aware of what it is that Marxists are attempting to destroy and what it is that they are attempting to replace it with. Continue reading →

The Curious Case of the Bourgeois Bubble Boy

Brandon Christensen Liberty, Politics , , , , , , ,

Since Ron Paul’s fantastic, spontaneous, incredible 2008 presidential campaign libertarianism has become a hot topic among the brightest people throughout the world. This is not a coincidence or an act of God, I think. The recent peak in interest of libertarian alternatives has to do with the sometimes sorry state that our world always seems to be in.  As somebody who came from the hard, anarchist, collectivist Left, I can assess that the libertarian alternative has been given a fair shake by a broad swathe of the American public.  However, on the hard Left, there has been bitter hostility towards anything remotely libertarian in American political discourse.  Most of this is envy, I think; a primitive form of envy that always forms when competition arises to challenge the orthodox opinions and mores of a society.

More on this is just a minute, but first: although there are indeed many problems facing the world today, we are living in a time of great abundance and peace. Furthermore, the periodic mass starvations in East Africa and the short, intense outbursts of small wars are both relatively simple to fix and uncommon (which is why they make the news). These are facts that we would do well to remember. Back to the hard, bitter Left.
Continue reading →

More Musings on Colonialism

Brandon Christensen History , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I recently attended an excellent lecture at Cabrillo College, located in central California, by an International Relations scholar who focused on the effects of colonialism. We took a solid look at the ‘World Systems Theory’ of why the developing world is, well, developing, and it was great to go over this school of thought’s main arguments.

For those of you who don’t know, World Systems Theory is a Marxian analysis that basically states that poor countries are poor because of the effects of colonialism, and the evidence supporting their claims is pretty damn solid. Basically, the World Systems theorists argue that when the various European powers gained outright control of non-European lands (this process in itself took centuries, by the way, and I deplore the historical narrative that argues Europeans set out to conquer foreign lands and divide up the spoils of war for reasons outlined in the link provided), the European powers set up states that were designed specifically to export raw agricultural materials to European factories, to be produced by European workers, and to be consumed by European (and elite non-European) consumers.

This is pretty much what happened, and explains why most of the developing world is dependent upon raw commodity exports (that are shipped to European markets) for most of their well-being. Unfortunately, the very solutions that the World Systems theorists propose to dismantle the structural inequalities that exist in this world will (and have) actually led to more of the same structural inequality.

Allow me to explain. Continue reading →

What exactly IS socialism anyway?

Brandon Christensen Liberty , , ,

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”  – From the tatters of an ancient Greek poem

I recently had an ugly exchange on Facebook with some acquaintances that started out being political in nature before descending into the gutter.

Two young graduate students pursuing studies that have nothing to do with political economy and who, unsurprisingly, consider themselves to be socialists simply turned what could have been a great teaching moment for a large number of people into an affair that was more deserving of spot on the Jerry Springer Show than in public, polite discourse.

Now, it must be noted that I am to blame for how the debate turned out, as I took the bait set for me that would lead the discussion from the intellectual arena and into the garbage.  You win some, you lose some, and I am quite certain that my vituperative attacks on socialism will cause them to think twice about posting such dim-witted, reactionary posts to their Facebook walls in the future.

I initiated the venomous exchange after my acquaintance posted this link written by a British aristocrat calling on socialists everywhere to simply begin ignoring capitalism as a way to further its (quite hideous and inhumane) demise and become replaced by a benevolent and voluntary form of socialism.

Here is what I said: Continue reading →