ILLUSIONS, HALF-TRUTHS AND MASKS: Keywords: Mamdani, Antifa, American communism, Mixed Economy, Keynes, Hyper-Inflation, Bidenomics, Ayn Rand, Hayek, socialism, communism, Fabian Society, Marshall Plan, New Deal, Harvard, Federal Reserve, IMF, World Bank.

ANTIFA Storm Troopers assault Federal ICE facility in Portland, Oct. 2025
Notice helmets and anti-gas mask of the "peaceful protesters"

ILLUSIONS, HALF-TRUTHS AND MASKS

A meditation about the new rise of communism in America

By Xuan Quen Santos

X

“There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

Quoted by John Maynard Keynes

“The Economic Consequences of the Peace” (1920)

THE BAIT OF THE MIXED ECONOMY

The mixed-economy is the disguised slow path to totalitarian communism as it degenerates and crashes by its own internal contradictions. It creates the conditions for a disguised revolution through the takeover of the electoral process.

There is no objective or scientific definition of what a “mixed economy “ is. It is easy to understand the basic idea, but there are no details. Does any combination qualify? It is a plastic model that can take any possible proportions of what it pretends to mix: a free market economy and the coercive power of the state apparatus to intervene in it. The absurdity is better perceived if we use some of their own words, such as “Capitalist Marxism” or “State Capitalism”. They stopped using these phrases a long time ago because they could not “spin” them effectively

Keynes during the Bretton Woods conference. It led to the establishment of the international financial and monetary systems after 1944 to fund the reconstruction of Europe

The conflict of the idea is easily identified: the more government intervenes, the less free the economy is. It is an ambiguous concept that lends itself to confusion. I propose that it is on purpose. It is another vehicle to advance and precipitate the “conditions for revolution”, or for quiet submission through the electoral process in which personal liberty is exchanged for bits of fraudulent promises of security.

The mixed-economy is the gradual process that moves the needle from wherever “in the middle” it starts towards the end of a totalitarian form or government, whatever name the leaders choose.

A SOCIAL ORDER WITHOUT GOVERNMENT

Thinkers of all ages have dreamed of the organization of a community that functions without empowering a body of force. The ancient Greek meaning of anarchy meant without rulers or government. An (a) means none or absence of. Archos means government. A handful of philosophers considered this choice as an option viable only in very small groups. This led to another word: demarchy (democratia)). Other terms that are related and still used with their original meanings are monarchy (monos, one) and oligarchy (a select few).

Other thinkers, mainly religious leaders, thought of anarchy as a possibility that could exist among good, moral people. Trying to make all people good has been the justification of most honest religious leaders, who inevitably end up becoming “the power”. All the visions of paradise on Earth depart from this belief. They have been grouped under the labels of “religious communitarian”, or “romantic utopians”, or “religious tyrants”. With our real knowledge of Marxism’s flaws, and its 150 years of real-life failures, the unfulfilled paradise of communism can now be thrown into this historical trashcan with all the rest of broken promises.

Humans are not angels. We are imperfect and still belong to this world. The history of political science shows our efforts to recognize the need to create this “power” for defense from others, and also to maintain internal peace. This means that any form of “anarchy” ends up in what today’s universal meaning of the word states. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “absence of government, or a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority”.

The Battle with Leviathan, by Gustave Dore

Thomas Hobbes, one of the first Western philosophers of politics, wrote in 1651 “Leviathan”. He justified the creation of a “social contract” by which organized violence is deposited in an all powerful ruler. Since then, Leviathan describes the abusive state apparatus, although his intention was quite the opposite. Without this organization of the power of the people, he assured us that “Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In my opinion, life under communism is exactly that. Anarchy ruled by terror and immorality. Very much like the ancient Plato’s proposal in “Republic”, Hobbes believed in the possibility of finding the perfectly good and wise “philosopher-prince”. There are no records of any of those, and testimonies in praise of some are written propaganda, just political spin.

In addition to the leftover Kumbaya hippies whose brains have been toasted, there is only one contemporary current of intellectuals that believe in a new form of anarchy. They call themselves “Anarcho-capitalists”. They are the direct result of the cult of greed created by the followers of Ayn Rand. Two significant figures represent their ideas. One is Murray Rothbard who coined the term. The other one is David Friedman, son of the famous Nobel Laureate. They claim their roots in the “objectivism” current of Rand, and in the economic theories of the free market developed by the Austrian School, particularly of Mises and Hayek who taught in the United States for many years.

A careful reading of the writings of Rand, Mises and Hayek disprove their claims. These three authors never advocated for no-government but were for a political system of specific and limited functions, of low cost, and that would not burden the economic process but facilitate it. Mises small book “Bureaucracy” very clearly justifies the existence of certain functions of government that cannot be performed by market processes. Hayek also wrote a complete proposal of what he envisioned as a proper government in his book “The Constitution of Liberty”. Unfortunately, some of the noise that Anarcho-capitalists have made has been used to attack the very system they try to defend.

A reasonable conclusion is that any organized community will create a form of government for its own protection and preservation. So, whatever scheme of “mixed-economy” is proposed, stands on the premise that a form of government would not only fulfill its genuine role of government, but also find a way to enhance the economic system to compensate its cost. Just because a country spends part of its wealth in supporting the government it does not mean it is automatically a “mixed-economy”. It is a matter of how much bureaucracy interferes with political objectives altering the decisions people freely make in the market.

THE ESSENTIAL IDEA OF GOVERNMENT

The idea of forming a specialized communal group for the protection of all is ancient and controversial. Individuals give part of their power and pay the cost the new institution represents. This clearly means the services received from government have beneficial economic value. It is obviously a cost-benefit analysis. Without it we are under the risk of violence from others because we are not angels, and we live under the “Law of the Jungle”. That is costly as it is destructive and inhibitory of any creative activity. Two other equally ancient problems appear. Some like to enjoy the benefits the institution provides but avoid its cost. They are called “free-riders”. Because we are not angels, those that receive the power from the community are always tempted to abuse it; “who guards the guardians?”

Human communities have been trying to solve these problems with many different ideas. We are still looking for a better answer.

The basic scheme that justifies the existence of government implies several things. Governments exist to serve the people, not to control their lives. Governments have limited functions in the use of their delegated power. Governments are always limited in their cost to the point they become a burden, and their cost exceeds the benefits the people obtain from their service. Briefly, an effective government has limited functions, has the lowest possible cost, and is controlled by the people.

Not long ago, these characteristics described the federal system of the United States of America. It received the designation of “exceptional”.

That is no longer the case. The United States of America has declined and is part now of the “middle-way”.

WHO GUARDS THE GUARDIANS?

If you are a reasonable person, you will find that empowering “a social force” leads to other decisions. What for? How much power, and what will it cost? These are the questions that justify the existence of political science. For several thousand years we have tried different combinations without much positive result.

The United States of America is an exceptional political organization for many reasons, but one is its original search for a different form for the government they were establishing. It lasted from 1765, when the first military forces sent by the King of England began to arrive, until 1791, when the sovereign Vermont Republic voted for ratification of the design that was proposed.

For more than a hundred years, each colony had been self-governed by a different scheme. Some were direct charters granted by the English government; others were equivalent to home rule, and a few of those had a structure tied to their religious beliefs and organization. They soon learned they could not count with any emergency assistance from the distant ruler. Self-reliance and community participation in public affairs became part of their character. They were free to join the church of their choice, even if in some cases they had to change residence. They formed voluntary armed forces for defense and protection. They organized schools. Historians have called this “the period of benign neglect”. It ended when the British forces began to arrive in 1765.

Gradually, the opposition of the colonials to the king’s forces took form in the Revolutionary War that led to independence. History has featured The Continental Congress since 1774 as a major force of this period, ignoring that its participants had been active in their local houses of government for many years. Once Congress began, each colony sent representatives who were changed with some frequency during the 15 years it took the new Federal system to be in place. More than 2,000 representatives of the people debated the ideas of a new form of government, and only their emissaries were sent to the Continental Congress as they all were being persecuted. The newspapers of the times reflect their debates about the different ideas proposed, with their benefits and risks. Most of them were highly educated for the times, many were lawyers, landowners or merchants. Not all of them were of English descent. Most considered themselves loyal English subjects.

They took their time to debate their ideas. They did not want to repeat the errors of history. Some did not want a major change; they just wanted a good king. Others wanted representation in the Parliament in London. They repealed any notion of democracy. Many began to argue in favor of independence. A few admired the institutions of the Roman Republic.

What did they produce at the end? A political system designed to protect and defend the individual person’s rights, even from his own government!   A government elected by the people through their state  representatives for the main purpose of securing and protecting the rights of the people and of the states.

The structure of the Federal Government has limited functions; its power is divided with reciprocal controls among its three separate branches. Several checks guarantee a periodical change of those in power, such as term limits and frequent elections. It also guarantees the citizen to bear arms as an ultimate protection against governmental abuse of power. The organization and functioning of the government are outlined in the U. S. Constitution. The government has specific prohibitions contained in the Bill of Rights in order to protect the individual rights of the people. It also has limitations of how much power it has over the states governments.

In my opinion, after the well-known First and Second prohibitions to the government contained in the “Bill of Rights”, items Nine and Ten are the most important. Here are the texts:

Amendment IX

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”.

Amendment X

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people”.

Who guards the guardians? We, The People retain the power to rein in the powers delegated to the government. It is important that voters exercise their right to elect their representatives to government that will also be custodians of the power we have invested on them.

Socialist masked as Social-Democrat Sen. Sanders endorses Communist Mamdani for NY Mayor. Socialism paves the way for communism

We have not been doing well as guardians.

A simple proof is the cost of the federal government. Since 1900, the federal government has operated in deficit more than 80% of the years. It spends more than the citizens pay. The public debt has grown without limit. The Tax Freedom Day estimates that the average citizen in 1900 paid in taxes what he earned from January 1 to January 22; that is 6% of his earnings. By the year 2000, the average citizen had to work until May 1; that was more than 33% of his income. This example of the high cost of government in recent years has become obsolete because the cost of inflation has to be added as a tax. Inflation is caused by excessive, unfunded government spending; it has become a routine. If you add the annual inflation rate of 2023-24 of close to 10%, we are paying 43% of our annual personal income to support the apparatus of the federal state.

The cost of government has become a burden.

The government has used its power to intrude in the private affairs of the citizens by way of the ambiguous and very wide-open door of “the general welfare”. We just went through four years of the grossest recent attempt to move the needle of the “mixed-economy” towards more socialism in disguise. Under two already well-established masked frauds, the “fight against climate-change that is the most serious threat to humanity”, and the “fight against inflation”, Bidenomics forced the approval of the “Inflation Reduction Act”. As he was leaving office, he admitted that the original name should have been kept: “The Green New Deal”. Coal mines shut down, pipelines were stopped, new drilling permits were denied, mandates to convert to electric vehicles appeared, wood-fired pizza ovens were prohibited, toilet flushing was made inefficient, new lightbulbs were mandated, many home appliances were prohibited, current HVAC systems have to be changed, including ceiling fans, and the list of intrusions is endless. If you don’t agree with calling these abusive regulations intrusions into the private economic decisions every household makes, you can make up your own spin. We have been told this is the cost you have to pay to save the planet. But one thing was inevitable. Inflation was the tool used to impose these changes.

Inflation is no longer considered a curse, a calamity, or an abuse of the control of the currency by the government, as it had been for thousands of years. It is now “monetary policy”, the biggest masked-fraud that is the tool of socialism. In order to promote more spending without raising taxes, they assure us their offerings are “free”. This illusion is the biggest mask of all.

 The fight against fossil fuels shot up the prices of gasoline from $ 1.79 per gallon on 2020 election day to close to $ 7.00 per gallon in some states. Subsidies to “green” groups investing in wind and solar farms were increased, and massive new entitlement programs were approved. This bloated budget created a severe increase in the public deficit, which had to be financed by the emission of new dollars by  the US Treasury. In turn, this increased the interest rate levels across the economy by more than 370%.

As could have been expected, the general level of all prices began to rise. By the end of the Biden-Harris administration, one year the annual rate had registered close to 10% per annum, and the accumulated inflation reached 25%. To buy the same amount of groceries $ 1.00 could buy in 2020, now you require $ 1.25. The lower income levels of the population are the most affected. More lies were sold by the complicit media. Inflation was caused by Covid and by the broken supply-chains, then it was going to be temporary; then caused by the mysterious rising price of gasoline, by the mysterious increase in interest rates, by the Ukraine War…and finally, by the greed of the industrialists and merchants. Lies, lies, lies…

Modern inflation is no longer illegal or immoral. It is now called “monetary policy”. It all began with an illusionist’s trick during a time of crisis, precisely caused by the government’s economic policies.

KEYNES PAVED THE ROAD TO COMMUNISM

“From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” is a phrase that sums up the essence of the principles of a society that still believes wealth is produced in one system and its distribution is carried out by another. This idea was promoted by offspring of the French Revolution, such as Cabet and Blanc, popularized by utopian socialists and anarchists who adopted scientific positivism. It was taken up in 1875 by Karl Marx in his "Critique of the Gotha Program" (Published by Engels in 1891) to formulate the principle by which the highest phase of communist society would be governed. Any such programs are re-distribution of other people’s wealth.

From Ancient history to the history of the 20th century, which still projects its negative inertia into our century, we are shown that the idea of re-distributing wealth, even if it is disguised as justice by the words “social”, “equity” and “fairness” implies three things.

First, it does not solve anything in terms of creating what there is to distribute. But more than that. It becomes a threat to wealth creation as it inhibits human creativity and initiative. Why produce more if it is going to be taken away, and I will get it free anyway? It gradually stops economic growth, and it will become negative. Poverty is assured.

Second, there is no justice applied as an abstract and general rule of “equal right” to make the distribution; it requires arbitrary power to set a criteria or intention to decide what each person “needs”. It requires force, violence and abuse implicit in authority. It leads to corruption.

Third, there is ample evidence of what has happened to all countries that have been subjected to these economic fallacies in the last 150 years. Data based conclusion.

The socialist countries seem to work until the wealth that had been created before is exhausted. Then, there is nothing left to be taken from anyone to give to someone else. They end when they reach the bottom of the pork barrel.

But the tragedy is greater. This anti-economic system has now been legislated as the illusion of stimulating the market economy in order to save it. It is no longer promoted as a clear socialist system; it is sold to the citizens as the scientific solution to the deficiencies of the free enterprise system. It is no longer justified by a creative moralistic slogan helping the needy. It has been imposed as the achievement of science.

HOW DID IT HAPPEN?

It was Keynes who destroyed the essential idea of how the market "distributes" wealth. He created concealed channels by which the government takes from some to give to others. He created the illusion that the government can give away free goods and services without any consequence to the system. The market economy has its own system that is fair and economic. It is called “The Fundamental Law of Markets”, or “Say’s Law” in honor of its proponent, the French economist Jean Baptiste Say.

Say’s Law simply states that if anyone wants to participate in the benefits of the market, the only thing he has to do is offer something valuable to others in exchange for something of value he wants. In the end, both sides received what they valued more. Each one has received a benefit, his share of what the market “distributes”. What we supply to the market is used as demand for what we obtain in exchange. In my opinion, economists over the years oversimplified this obviously true statement as “supply equals demand”. You can only participate if you own, create or produce something of value that you sell first, in order for you to buy something you want.

Keynes saw things differently. Today we buy, demand, with money. So, having money is demand. He did not make the distinction between honestly produced, saved or inherited money and stolen money, forged money, or paper just printed as money by the government. Say would have said, if you want to buy more, produce more. Say’s Law is directional; it is not a mathematical equation that can be reversed. But Keynes did.

This change was not an accidental mistake. It was intentional. Keyne’s changed the terms and destroyed the essential idea of The Law of the Markets in his book "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" (1936). In the midst of the Great Depression and the post-World War I economic crisis, it occurred to him that one way to "stimulate" the economy was to add "demand." Say’s Law clearly indicates the only authentic way to do it is to produce more, that is: to stimulate supply. Keynes saw its alternative: People demand-buy with money. How is demand today if it is not by producing? By getting money in any other way. Who controls and creates the money? A state monopoly called “central bank”.

Instead of burning expensive and scarce coal, a housewife fuels the furnace
with piles of useless Weimar Republic money. Everyone becomes a
worthless millionaire during socialist hyperinflations

In the old days, when the treasurer had to keep the king’s gold safe in the treasury, the only way to create more money was to adulterate the proportion of gold or silver in the coins by adding other less valued metals, or to make the coins smaller. In more recent times, paper-money was representative of the gold kept in reserve by the treasury. Printing money had a limitation with real value. Since the ideas of Keynes have become Law, the printing presses and other accounting gimmicks have had no limit beyond the prudence of the political leaders in charge.

Time has proven they have no prudence. Bidenomics is a good example. Until Keynes, adulterating the value of money and forging fake money had been considered among the most criminal activities against the state. They were also immoral. Everybody knew they were forms of stealing. These time-proven beliefs were destroyed by Keynesian economists, the illusionists of inflation.

Increasing the public payroll or public spending in public projects does not increase the number of goods available; it creates inflation. Building expensive bridges that are not needed only creates the illusion of economic activity, when in fact it is destroying wealth. “Economic Stimulus” programs are the trick of the illusionists. What today has been called the "mixed economy" is a new disguise for the command economy and the destructive idea of "wealth re-distribution." It has created a popular belief that the government can create wealth out of thin air and dole out free goods at no cost to anyone. What this practice creates is dependency on the state, the ultimate goal of socialism. Along the way it destroys the market. 

KEYNES WAS SOCIALIST

 A genuine question about any influential person in the economic and political scene is to ask what their ideological and partisan leanings are. That helps us put any proposal they make into the context of the big picture. Keynes was elevated to the position of savior of the failed capitalist system, as seen in the Great Depression. Today’s explanation of economic science of what led to that terrible period of history is that the interventionist foreign-exchange and monetary policies were the cause, not the market forces. The inevitable consequences were papered over with the expansionism of the state with the policies of FDR's New Deal, which prolonged the crisis, and then concealed into the WWII effort.

Going to try to buy a loaf of bread in 1923 in the Weimar republic
 during the hyperinflation caused by the Marxist-socialist
controlled government. The packages are wrapped piles of money

What ideology did Keynes support? The answer has been given by researcher Edward W. Fuller in an article published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, in August 2019. The title is suggestive, “Was Keynes a socialist?”, but the article is compelling. Contrary to general belief, especially in the United States where he is still considered the father and savior of capitalism with his new economics, Keynes was a socialist from 1907 until his death in 1946. He described himself as a socialist. He always aligned himself with socialist policies and movements in Great Britain. He was one of the most famous members of the Fabian Society. His political proposals always promoted the expansion of public functions, the increase in the fiscal budget and in the state payroll. His journalistic writings were always in support of socialism, as was his participation in public policy. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and has duck feathers, it follows that it is…

Considering Keynes to be the savior of the free enterprise system or market economy inherent to the United States American dream is another aspect of the socialist propaganda.

THE WEAPONIZATION OF INFLATION

           It is obvious to me that what we clearly see happening now in the United States is not an isolated regression, and it did not just happen overnight. I refer to Keynesianism as an effort to produce the image of a mixed economy. It can supposedly combine the best the free market can offer with a supposed efficient centralized management the state experts can provide. I compared it to an oil and vinegar salad dressing. To combine it requires a lot of agitation. As soon as agitation stops, the two parts separate naturally because they are not compatible.

Keynesianism requires agitation to be justified. It is invited when economic anxiety, a slowdown, and unemployment are forecasted. Then, there is political agitation, and Keynesianism gets into the market as an intruder and causes a correction by causing a boom with low interest rates and inflation. More agitation comes as real wages drop, and scarce capital is misdirected. Another correction comes and a recession is caused raising interest rates that result in unemployment, and a new correction is needed…

AGITATION IS A CONDITION FOR REVOLUTION

 The logical conclusion is simple. There is no end to the cycle because agitation is always needed. Agitation is more than a word on paper. It means social convulsion; it means a public state of anxiety and anomie; it means massive transfers of wealth from some groups to others, destruction of scarce capital, price controls, rationing at times and excessive inventories at others. It also means an ever-growing increase in the controls the state has over the lives of the people. It requires the growth of the state apparatus and a growing dependence on the state’s handouts.

                The erosion of the wealth of the people and of the soul of the nation is gradual and difficult to perceive until it is too late. Compromising and negotiating becomes an endless series of crisis. In their error in science, they called it “the business cycle”. The name is a misdirection that evades all responsibility in those that believe that the government should be in absolute control of money, banking and credit. They blame business, who is us, We the People. We are the victims, not the perpetrators.

                What if Keynesianism never had the intention of correcting what they identified as inherent deficiencies of the market economy? What if they have always known of the required agitation and growing controls? What if they use it to lubricate the path towards their goal avoiding the violent revolution their previous models required?

                Keynes preached his visions from a comfortable oversized leather armchair while smoking a cigarette and sipping expensive scotch whisky. At the beginning of this entry, I included the following quote about inflation he published in the book that brought him initial notoriety. “The Economic Consequences of the Peace” (1919) became a bestseller with a warning that went unheeded. Keynes had participated as part of the British delegation in the discussions that led to the Treaty of Versailles that ended WW I. He resigned before the treaty was concluded, in despair over the extreme reparations and conditions the Allies were imposing on Germany. He had concluded that trying to meet those conditions would inevitably create such internal crisis that Germany would resort to war again. Time proved him correct. He illustrated this point thus:

“There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

NY AG Letitia James endorsing communism for the next NY election.
She weaponized the justice system for political purposes using the Stalin Model

              

The Comrade Leaders of the Revolution of 1917 disposed by Stalin over the years.

           What I did not indicate is that Keynes attributed this terrifying dictum to the founding father of state terrorism, Lenin. It is usually shortened as “The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.” A hundred years later, there is still controversy as to its origin as it does not appear in the collected works and documents of the Lenin archives. Critics claim Keynes made it up. In the Journal of Economic Perspectives of the Spring 2009, Michael V. White and Kurt Schuler report their findings on the issue, “It is now possible to show that Keynes based his remark on a report of an interview with Lenin published by London and New York newspapers in April 1919. Keynes’ discussion of inflation in the Economic Consequences can then be read as an extended commentary on the remarks attributed to Lenin in the interview”.

          White and Schuler explain what was happening in 1919 and the consequences that Keynes predicted, “Old governments clinging to power or revolutionaries trying to seize power found, either by design or effect, that inflation was the quickest way to supply their spending wants. By the time Keynes wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace, events were in train that by 1923 would lead to hyperinflations in Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. All fit the definition of a hyperinflation as a period where inflation exceeds 50 percent a month for at least three consecutive months”.

Lenin addressing a crowd in Moscow in 1930

              The famous quote appears in Chapter 6 of Keynes’ book, at the end of the following paragraph, “Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become ‘profiteers’, who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and it does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose”.

             The interview with Lenin while he was in Geneva was published on April 23, 1919, by The New York Times and in London by the Daily Chronicle. One of the interviewer’s notes describes Lenin’s obsession with a plan to destroy the power of money in the capitalist system. Within a rambling series of attacks to capitalism, Lenin tells his personal experience in how to weaponize monetary inflation describing what he had been doing in the recently created Soviet Union.

           “Hundreds of thousands of Ruble bills are being issued daily by our treasury. This is done, not in order to fill the coffers of the State with practically worthless paper, but with the deliberate intention of destroying the value of money as a means of payment. There is no justification for the existence of money in the Bolshevik state, where the necessities of life shall be paid for by work alone. Experience has taught us it is impossible to root out the evils of capitalism merely by confiscation and expropriation, for however ruthlessly such measures may be applied, astute speculators and obstinate survivors of the capitalist classes will always manage to evade them and continue to corrupt the life of the community. The simplest way to exterminate the very spirit of capitalism is therefore to flood the country with bills of a high face-value without financial guarantees of any sort. Already even a hundred-Ruble note is almost valueless in Russia. Soon even the simplest peasant will realize that it is only a scrap of paper, not worth more than the rags from which it is manufactured. Men will cease to covet and hoard it as soon as they discover it will not buy anything, and the great illusion of the value and power of money, on which the capitalist state is based will have been definitely destroyed. This is the real reason why our presses are printing Ruble bills day and night, without rest”. The reason why Lenin was announcing this policy to the world followed, “…this simple process must, like all the measures of Bolshevism, be applied all over the world in order to render it effective. Fortunately, the frantic financial debauch in which all Governments have indulged during the war has paved the way everywhere for its application...”

Communist candidate for Mayor of New York City, Zoran Mamdani promoting the dream of affordability under communism, the latest fraudulent mask

            HAS THE TIME COME?

                There is a time for everything; a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to build and a time to tear down, a time to laugh and a time to weep, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to mend and a time to tear, a time to be silent and a time to speak. It is the time to speak.

                Has the time come to tear down the republic, and throw away our freedoms to implant communism?

 

ILLUSIONS, HALF-TRUTHS AND MASKS: Keywords: Mamdani, American communism, Fascism, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Ayn Rand, Hayek, Keynes, socialism, communism, Fabian Society, Marshall Plan, New Deal, Harvard

Revolutionary Communists of America Hold Mega Rally In Philadelphia, July 2024

ILLUSIONS, HALF-TRUTHS AND MASKS

A meditation about the new rise of communism in America

By Xuan Quen Santos

IX

 

 

“There is no difference between communism

 and socialism, except in the means of

achieving the same ultimate end:

communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism - by vote.

It is merely the difference between

murder and suicide”

 

Ayn Rand (1951)

 

                A century separates the words of Ayn Rand, a refugee from  the Soviet Union, and Marx’s 1848 call for the workers of the world to rise in violence against the free market economy. Note that Rand has implicitly stated that socialism will also end up in communism, not by revolution but by election of the people who willingly give up their liberty in what would be their last vote. Why would voters make that decision?

                This question has been answered by many wise men, but each generation forgets their warnings. The Sage of Philadelphia and one of the key Founding Fathers, Ben Franklin is often quoted: "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have either one." The American conservative philosopher Richard M. Weaver (1910-1963) gave this answer in his autobiography: “The past shows unvaryingly that when a people’s freedom disappears, it goes not with a bang, but in silence amid the comfort of being cared for. That is the dire peril in the present trend towards statism”. He had been brainwashed at university in Kentucky and had become a socialist activist, even becoming the Secretary of the state wide Socialist Party. An independent thinker and a keen observer of what was happening, he later became an important voice that exposed the failings of the socialist policies being adopted at the time under the label of FDR’s New Deal.

                Like Rand and Weaver, many young Americans re-discovered the value of liberty after realizing that while confronting the economic crisis of the Great Depression, immediately followed by the WW II effort, the Federal Government had turned into a masked replica of the same powers usurped by the three different versions of socialism in Europe. We don’t like to admit that FDR became an authoritarian despot that abused the US Constitution. By the 1930s, Stalin’s Soviet Union was the center of International Socialism, while Hitler and Mussolini were the exponents of nationalist socialism. It must not be forgotten that the British Labor party was the socialist organization that facilitated Hitler’s initial expansion and still controls British politics under the mask the fake monarchy provides.

The Munich Meeting. English Socialist PM Chamberlain, and French Marxist PM Daladier give Hitler and Mussolini, national socialists, the go ahead to take Czechoslovakia

                At about the same time, another former young socialist, Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) also shared the same concern. He was an Austrian academic that had taken refuge in England before WW II. By then he had become the strongest voice of criticism of the economic policy ideas of Keynes which had been the basis to justify the New Deal in the USA and the expansion of socialism in the United Kingdom. Hayek published “The Road to Serfdom” in 1944 as a warning to the western allies. He saw the danger of tyranny that inevitably results when the government controls the economy through centralized planning. Paraphrasing one of his conclusions, the more the government plans, the less each person can plan his life. This invariably means the loss of personal freedoms. The “War Effort” of the allies was nothing less than centralized planning directed by the Federal Government. Under the mask of patriotism the country rallied, and the entire apparatus of industry was at the disposal of the government planners. One thing was to convert automobile plants into airplane and bomb factories. Another one was to introduce the socialist agenda through the back door of Keynesian economic policies of expanding public welfare entitlement programs to increase voter support. The war was over, the factories returned to their owners and administrators, but the apparatus of government dependency remained in place, and kept growing ever since.

                Rand, Weaver and Hayek saw socialism as the path to communism by taking over the electoral systems that characterize the modern Western countries. Ben Franklin, two centuries before, had perceived the dangers that empowering Congress with the control of the purse had created. A much clearer warning was made in 1840 by an admiring visitor. In his book “Democracy in America”, De Tocqueville wrote: “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers it can bribe the public with the public’s money”. Congress has discovered it.

                The socialist factions of the American political system have gradually learned to buy votes using their legislative power with a mask of empathy and benevolence to create handouts, giveaways and freebies. They offer “free” security.

        The cost is not funded with their personal donations. It comes from the pockets of the very same people they pretend to benefit. Socialists claim to tax the rich to give to the poor, when in fact, they are the champions of runaway public spending financed by monetary inflation. Inflation is a hidden task that impacts the poor more than the rich and ends up destroying all savings. Only 2% of the taxpayers pay 50% of the federal income tax. 50% of the taxpayers do not pay anything. Taxes can’t be raised more; inflation is the key.

                We are at the crossroads as a nation. There is still a small opportunity to reverse the course and regain our liberty.

ANOTHER PROOF OF MARX’S ERRORS

                There is only one good aspect evidenced by the socialists’ attempt to take over the spending budget of the federal system. It is a hidden admission of error, another mask.

Contemporary anti-capitalist propaganda

            It is unquestionable that the Marx-Engels intellectual construct stated categorically that spontaneously: 1) Capitalism was collapsing by its own internal contradictions. 2) Because of the inevitable and constantly increasing exploitation of the proletariat with ever lowering wages, a violent revolt would take place. 3) The change would take the form of a new socio-political order called socialism. And 4) A new classless, egalitarian society called communism would eventually be established to guarantee everyone whatever they needed, from the cradle to the grave.

Anticapitalist vintage poster 

                IT NEVER HAPPENED!

              In previous entries I quoted Marx’s awesome description of the changes he was witnessing originated in what he called the new era of the businessmen and entrepreneurs (Which he called the bourgeoisie). He expressed his admiration for the new markets and products that were driving the reorganization of industry and labor. But his limited understanding of the economic process and personal hatreds were a blind that prevented him to see the whole truth: wages and salaries were increasing; standards of living were improving. Life was better, particularly for the underclasses. As times have gone by, the truth is evident.

Just two decades after Marx’s call for the workers uprising, he was confronted with factual information about higher wages, salaries and productivity. His answer: The capitalists are conspiring to stop the revolution by paying the workers more. I have actually heard the same explanation from union leaders in more recent times.

Going back to his three stages of dialectical materialism ending in the paradise called communism, one thing is clear: SOCIALISM PRECEDES AND LEADS TO COMMUNISM. In the Marxist scheme, this order IS the order in which the evolution of events must happen. It has always been clear that socialism, whatever mask may be wearing at a particular time and place, is the road to the “workers’ paradise”. One way is through civil war and terrorism, the other way is by taking over the democratic electoral processes.

SUPPORT DWINDLES FOR REVOLUTION

At least three very important socialist groups came to the conclusion that the “call for revolution” was getting nowhere. It did not matter whether it was because Marx’s scheme was an error all along, or whether it was a conspiracy of the capitalists. Because by the 1880s the socialist parties had become part of the system, they were no longer an outside force and were not about to announce they had been wrong. They had party and personal interests to defend and expand. One of the modern applications of economic science is the analysis of political behavior. By the late 1800s, the socialists had become self-serving “rent-seekers”, a concept proposed by my late friend Gordon Tullock (1922-2014). Tullock and James Buchanan established what how is called “The School of Public Choice”, which applies concepts and methods of economic science to political behavior.

 Two processes were taking place in Europe: a) More people were included in the voting rolls under the name of Universal Suffrage; women power began to surge. And b) The autocratic monarchies gave up their absolutism and accepted to go the British way, transfering to the elected legislative bodies some of their powers in exchange for very healthy pensions.

One example of this trend was the creation of the Labor Party in England by the Fabian Society, the socialist organization I have discussed before. A second example at the end of the XIX century is the Prussian-German socialist party, by then, the most powerful voting block. Socialism with whatever mask was worn, became part of the political establishment. I could call these the “bourgeoisie” socialists, but I prefer to label them naïve or disguised.

THE PERFECT MASK

It is from those new political currents that a new proposal was advanced: the middle-way, the compromise way, the peaceful way. The perfect mask: social democracy, or democratic socialism with a mixed-economy. This re-branding has been successful. Most people have not realized that the cosmetic alteration is for electoral purposes only. The destination is the same.

This transformation makes the warnings of Ben Franklin, De Tocqueville, Rand, Weaver, and Hayek an emergency alert.

For their first decades as new legal political organizations until the sequels of WW I became known, the socialist organizations and leaders did not deny their Marxist origin or their same objectives of destroying capitalism and install communism.  After the horrors of WW I and the Soviet Revolution, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were repudiated by the naïve socialists and the nationalist socialists in Germany, England and Italy. Intellectual Socialists around the world took distance from the realities of Marxism in real-life in the Soviet Union and shortly after in Red China.

NAZI AND FASCISM WERE BORN SOCIALIST

Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, Fascism
Mein Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, National Socialism
Both Anti-Soviet socialists
Reviewing a parade in Munich

The English refused to be “so violent” and hid behind the “Labor” mask. The German Marxists led to the collapse of the Weimar republic after WW I and precipitated the formation of the National Socialist Party (NAZI for short) that elevated Hitler by popular elections. The NAZI brand was so well implanted in the public’s consciousness that very few people see that the ZI means socialism. Since the NAZI regime was heading in the same inevitable direction as the Soviet Union under Stalin, after WW II, socialists in Germany needed a new mask. NAZI was not working anymore. Naïve German socialists tried the mask of social-market economy, and a conservative current even gave it a religious label as Christian Democrats.

The ancient Roman Fasces on the right, symbol of Law and Order

                             Meaning: Out of Many, One. 1941 minting. Was FDR a Fascist too?

Italy was decades behind in their struggle to rid themselves of the two royal houses that had some control of parts of the peninsula until 1946! Italy did not exist as a unified country in the territory it occupies now until  the end of WW II, thanks to the allies, basically the USA. Between the wars, a radical nationalist communist guerrilla leader controlled parts of the country appealing to the pride of their  common Roman past. Mussolini hid its Marxist origin behind the Roman Fasces, an ancient symbol of law and order. In case you do not know what they are, they are the small axes surrounded by bundled sticks that appear in several US coins and as architectural elements in many Federal buildings in Washington DC and across the country. Like the NAZI brand, FASCISM attained a life of its own, so successful that few people see it as a mask used by another brand of violent communism.

Adolf Hitler reviewing the Hitler Jugend (Youth) Rally in Nurenberg

THE REBRANDING OF THE LEFT

The conflicts within the Marxist-socialist-communist party organizations led to the famous killings of Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky, among many others. The Spanish Civil War that was supposed to be the people’s revolutions also failed because the different communist parties (pro-soviet, pro-nationalist Marxist, pro-naïve socialist) had initially taken over the mask of the republican side but soon were killing each other. A whole library of “fantasy” political literature describes this period. Two are well known in the English language. George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia” (1938), and “For Whom the Bells Toll” (1940) by Ernest Hemingway.

Blair-Orwell memoir as an embedded reporter
and guerrilla fighter in the Spanish Civil War

Blair-Orwell made no secret of his political ideas as a Fabian Socialist once he became disenchanted with Stalin’s policies. He spent the rest of his days promoting the soft kind of middle-way socialism. Hemingway was ambiguous about his political beliefs, but several secret files came out after his death. During his activist reporter period in the Spanish Civil War he was recruited by the Soviets, and his spy name was Argo. Later, he may have been a double agent, serving the CIA and the communists. After WW II, he lived in Cuba for 20 years, until he returned to the USA shortly before he suicided.

Ernest Hemingway was a soviet operator
in the Spanish Civil War. Later a double agent

It was during this chaotic period between the world wars that the confusion that originated in the Marxist’s theoretical failures changed the political language and model.

The setting of the changing names also reflects real changes taking place. From the last decades of the XVIII century to the end of WW I, Europe had revolutions and wars that changed the systems of government from hereditary, autocratic monarchies to constitutional monarchies; then, kings and emperors disappeared, and empires broke apart; royal families were massacred, national borders shifted; war after war invariably were accompanied with inflation as a source of financing. Monetary systems collapsed. Several periods of recession were followed by periods of inflation. This span also marks the period of labor agitation, strikes, bombings, and police repression. It also marks an explosion of emigration to America.

Economic science had just been identified as an area of specific study, and it began with the name of political economy, directly linked to the actions of governments and policy. It no longer has such narrow focus. As the persistently repeating periods of boom and bust went without a credible explanation, the visibly rising business enterprises of the industrial age were declared guilty. Marx and Engels were free to point the finger and call for violence without significant opposition, other than police force, simply because it was clear that industry was the most  visible force generating “destructive change”. This was the name given to innovation. What happens during periods of boom and bust is that some become very rich and others go broke. Bankruptcies mean unemployment and businesses closing. Public entities usually go unaffected during these periods of crisis. Often they expand their reach of power.

What was the resulting diagnosis? Capitalism is dying and will soon be dead. By the time WW I ended, the financial crisis had extended to the world. Then, The Great Depression spread and soon Capitalism was pronounced dead.

There were political consequences. The old monarchic conservative parties, the old classical liberal-free trade parties, the old constitutional parties and any other political organization identified as connected to tradition and capitalism and its “inherent defect of the business cycle” were condemned to die too. And they began to disappear, or to become more like the new socialist wave. The two new code words were democratic and social.

THE EXTREME LEFT IS SHOVED TO THE RIGHT

The British Fabian socialists took advantage of the changing political environment and promoted a new model of analysis. It obviously highlighted the merits of their own version of middle of the road socialism with the mixed-economy that by the 1930s had received the boost of the New Economics of John Maynard Keynes, a Fabian champion. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was sold Keynes ideas and with his Harvard  followers, they shaped the New Deal policies of “inflationary collectivism”.

The new linear model they created places their “democratic socialism” and mixed economy in the middle. They gave it the mask of compromise, peaceful, and reasonable. To the extreme left they placed communism in the soviet style of the international socialism, still linked to Marx and revolution. The innovation was on the extreme right. To make sense of it, they needed the opposite of the extreme left. Nowhere in the model are the old conservatives, classical liberal and free traders that could have been associated with the capitalist economic system. Remember, by then they had been declared dead. Who did they place on the extreme right, the opposite of soviet style socialism?

On the extreme right appears FASCISM!

WHERE DID THE USA SYSTEM GO?

For this ploy of double-speak to work they had to re-define the Italian national socialism that Mussolini chose to label Fascism. Fabians re-defined the German NAZI socialism and the Italian Fascist socialist system as variants of a degenerate capitalism, violent and totalitarian.

Where did they place the system of the United States?

 The Special Relationship between Winston and FDR was again equated as the Special Relationship between Old England and its former enlarged New English colonies. Keynes had been declared the savior of the American Capitalism. His ideas propagated like a grass fire throughout American colleges. His policy proposals gave shape to the New Deal, to the Marshall Plan, to the reforms of the FED, and to the establishment of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The Fabian socialists declared triumph in the United States. The road to socialism was inaugurated. The United States at the end of WW II was reclassified by the socialist establishment as a new member of their movement.

Ever since they promoted their model, you hear the detractors of capitalism (the free market system) conflate it with fascism as its extreme expression.

This explains how socialists around the world interpreted the recent electoral changes in the US.  Obama-Biden and Biden-Harris were clearly part of the middle-way international socialist movement. The two elections of the MAGA movement represented to them a turn to the extreme right of fascist and NAZI capitalism. Of course, the MAGA President is indiscriminately called fascist and nazi. They prefer fascist because it is nebulously plausible, whereas nazi is obviously a lie.

DID ANYBODY NOTICE WE HAD ALREADY 

BECOME SOCIALIST TO THE WORLD?

DOUBLE-SPEAK TRIUMPHS

Socialists invented double-speak and have been destroying the clarity of common language to the point that two people using the same words may think they are understanding each other, when in fact they are in contradiction. It is a strategy.

There are two other points that need to be explained as part of the inevitability of socialism leading to communist in its worst form. One is an explanation of why leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot or Putin rise to power. The second one is the analysis of how the mixed economy or middle way degenerates and crashes by its own internal contradictions.

WHY THE WORSE GET ON TOP

 With this title Hayek introduces Chapter 10 of “The Road to Serfdom”. Published in 1944 as WW II was winding down, this small non-academic book was his warning about the dangers posed to freedom and Western values by the attempts to continue applying the policies of wartime economic and social planning  to the normal conditions of peace.

A reader today will find strange the arguments focused only on the horrors and excesses of the National Socialists, NAZIs, and the frequent use of the term fascist to designate the totalitarian policies of the “axis allies” that were not close to being defeated. The European military operations of WW II concluded in 1945, but the negotiations to settle the immediate future went on for several years. The last occupation troops did not leave Berlin until 1994! They were what had been the Soviet Red Army. The Soviet Union, the communist regime led by Joseph Stalin, known as “the butcher,” was a key ally of the forces that defeated the NAZI army in the eastern front. Why are these dates important?

Stalin, FDR and Churchill at the Teheran Allies Conference
December 1943, at the Soviet Embassy

Hayek was always apologetic about not including the Soviet Communist regime clearly in his warnings. This may have led some readers to err in their conclusions. His explanation was simple. 1) Stalin and the Soviet Union were an ally in the war effort, even though they represented the worst kind of totalitarian socialist-communist regime. In fact, they were the center of the international forces of terrorism and subversion that are now known as our enemies in “The Cold War” against the United States and the free market that immediately followed WW II. I am sure you have come across the famous photographs taken in Teheran and Yalta of Stalin, FDR and Churchill where the future parceling out of Europe was discussed. 2) His editors and academic colleagues thought it would be “unpatriotic” to criticize a wartime ally.

Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the February 1945 Conference
Held in Yalta, Crimea in the Soviet Union
FDR was already incapacitated. He died two months later. The war ended in May
The Western allies ceded to the Soviets what became known as Eastern Europe
The Soviets won.

I add to his comments my own observations. Hayek had been invited to teach at the London School of Economics a decade before. The LSE had been established by the Fabian Society, the center of naïve socialism in England. He was also a personal friend of Lord Keynes, the Fabian celebrity of the moment, even though they hardly agreed on anything on economics. Hayek’s rebuttals of Keynesian economics led the way to what is now considered mainstream economic science. Many Fabians, including Keynes, had important roles in the British government during the war. And, Hayek had become a British citizen in 1938 after emigrating from Austria in 1931.

“ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY”

Quoting Lord Acton’s (Edward Albert Dalberg) famous words, Hayek explains why the most notorious dictators rise to power. It is not essentially the result of any particular ideology but is the consequence of following a path that leads to absolute concentration of power in the state apparatus. Totalitarianism is a better non-partisan word. It so happens that the socialist intellectual construct inevitably becomes a totalitarian regime.

                Hayek explains several reasons as to how this process happens.

                A mass of people can more easily be mobilized among those who share homogeneous views about basic beliefs and inclinations. This is not likely to happen among the best elements of society that rise above those levels, develop their individual paths and strive for higher goals. Hayek indicates that, in general, the higher the education and abilities of individuals become, the more their views and tastes are differentiated and the less likely they are to agree on a particular set of political objectives. It follows that a higher degree of uniformity can more easily be found in the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards. “…as it were, the lowest common denominator which unites the largest number of people.”  Economic issues such as rising unemployment and inflation affect more those that already have tough choices to make with limited resources. Job security, price controls and anything free are policy proposals that are likely to activate the mob from the bottom.

                Once the docile mob has been activated, because they are likely gullible and without strong convictions of their own, they are ready to accept a packaged set of values that are rehearsed and repeated until they believe them. The psychological predispositions of those that become part of the mob have already been identified by Le Bon, Ortega y Gasset, Arendt and Desmet in the previous entry.

                UNITED AGAINST – A NEGATIVE BOND

                In order to increase the size of the mob, outliers that may not agree with the whole package of directives may be swayed to join by an opportunity to fight about one issue they feel strongly against, enough to put aside the differences that separate them from the hardliners. What do you think the Democratic party “big umbrella” means, or “the rainbow coalition”? Latin American dictators are always fighting against “Yankee imperialism”, African despots whine against “colonialism”. American agitators of African descent continue their war against “slavery” in one way or another. It does not matter if the object of their intense emotional hatred is real or fictitious.

                The next strategy to increase the mob is to spin an ambiguous enough umbrella cause where everyone can find a place because it that can mean something to everybody and is difficult to find anybody against. The “March for Women” was really a pro-abortion on demand demonstration disguised behind any other causes even remotely related to women: motherly love, equal pay, lesbian rights, trans-men demands, against toxic-masculinity, for breast-feeding, more maternity leave, for prostitution, against prostitution, against domestic abuse, for free child care, etc. The only group that was specifically warned not to participate were Pro-life organizations. A dead giveaway.

Hayek explains that “It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program—on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off—than on any positive task. The contrast between the ‘we’ and the ‘they’, the common fight against those outside the group, seems to be an essential ingredient in any creed which will solidly knit together a group for common action. It is consequently always employed by those who seek, not merely support of a policy, but the unreserved allegiance of huge masses.”

THE CROWD MENTALITY OVERTAKES

Once an individual has become part of the mob, he will find it difficult to express any opposing view. Peer pressure is a reality. When individuals join a mob, their behavior often changes compared to how they would behave alone. It is almost natural to expect to compete for who is the loudest, or the rowdiest, or the most violent. Crowd psychology as an extension of brainwashing has created the methodology for manipulating crowd behavior. It is now a social engineering phenomenon that has increased as a result of the proliferation of everybody wanting to be a celebrity on social media or to have their personal video to show off after the riot.

ANTIFA preparing for "mostly peaceful riot"
The mobilized storm troopers of the Democratic Party

Now all mob participants get a free T-shirt with the daily motto and a poster to carry. The agitators get a megaphone and a cell phone for instructions and the lyrics of the daily chant; enforcers get a different outfit, masks, backpacks and batons. Each mob has its own set of embedded videographers and a swarm of independent new media reporters. They look unruly and spontaneous. All part of the mask. In the old days the mobs took pride in looking as close as possible to organized armies. Remember the Brown Shirts of Hitler? Or the Black Shirts of Mussolini? Or the red stars, red bands, red shirts, or whatever red they could wear as part of the Red Army? The soviets were so broke, many still wore shoes made out of bark and could not afford shirts for everyone. Once in power, the key mobsters become part of the enforcement guards and become the outer side of the inner circle.

THE UNSCRUPULOUS SUCCEED

Mob participants empower the agitators, and all of them empower their leaders or sponsors. By doing so, each participant has lost his power of self-control. He is now controlled by the mob, and the mob is ruled by the leader. All barriers are broken; all checks and balances are gone.  Hayek concludes that “the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful” in any society in which the apparatus of the state is seen as the answer to most problems and seems accessible by using the mob. They are the kind of people who would use force rather than discourse, who would use domination over cooperation.  They can use it as a violent revolution, as in the old days, or they can use it to overwhelm the electoral process at present times. The mobs influence the public agenda; the mobs intimidate the news reporters and the media; the mobs intimidate candidates; the mobs intimidate authorities; the mobs intimidate voters.

The most egregious case of mobs made the news a few weeks ago. It was discovered that you could “rent a mob” for a fee.  Several TV news outlets reported that a company named Crowds on Demand provides services “for impactful advocacy campaigns, demonstrations, PR stunts, crowds for hire and corporate events,” according to its website. A company spokesperson indicated that “We’ve been in business 13 years, so we have a large roster of people we know and have networks of others we can call upon to be compensated”. The appearance of this type of business clearly reflects that mobs cannot any longer be considered “spontaneous expressions”, but they are a valuable political tool for sale that can be created to influence political events.

Lenin did say that capitalists would sell out.

THE INMORALITY OF EXPEDIENCY

The last aspect Hayek mentions is the loss of a moral compass to guide the most transcendental decisions of a community. He warns that totalitarian states lead to the corruption of moral and ethical values. In such environments, individuals who are willing to abandon principles and exploit others for personal gain are more likely to rise to positions of power and influence. Since Hayek abstained to include in his discussion the Soviet regime that is the incubus of Marxism, he could not be clear about this.

I can. As I have indicated in previous entries, Marxism has “dialectical materialism” as one of its foundations. This implies the negation of the human person’s free will and wise choices. It also implies that God  does not exist, and religion can’t justify its existence. Without free-will and a conscience, morality does not exist. In other words, the entire structure of at least the Western values that are recognized in our Judeo-Christian heritage are not there to establish a social order based on a Law superior to the designs of mankind.

What kind of rules of conduct -moral code- could develop in a Marxist/socialist state? Rules will necessarily be decided by “some” men, the ones at the top. We had already established those would be the worst men of their kind.

CORRUPTION IS INEVITABLE

Rules will be impermanent, changing as conditions or rulers come and go. This is called expediency: the quality of being convenient and practical despite possibly being improper or immoral; convenience. What is good in one case, may not be the same in the next. The universality of laws and rules can’t exist. Arbitrariness is the rule of no rules.

Remember also some basic elements of the Marxist construct: private, separable, individual property is abolished, particularly of “the means of production”. This destroys all elements of justice, described since antiquity with Ulpian’s definition: “To each his own”. The first role of a judge is to establish clearly the rights (a form of property) of the parties. In other words, the claims, but not rights, will be defined by authorities in charge of following the dictums of the leader. By now you know they are going to be the worst possible bad bureaucrats. Read Kafka’s “The Trial”, or “The Castle”; or Gogol’s “Dead Souls”. Or just get in trouble in Mexico, Uganda, or North Korea. You will know what this means.

Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Soviet Revolution
Disagreed with Stalin's methods and escaped to Mexico.
Assassinated

Another element that is abolished is “capital”, most of which had been transferred to the state with the abolition of individual ownership of property. The most fluid, liquid, form of capital is the value of the savings contained in money. In the socialist system, money as we know is destroyed as unnecessary and everyone is given “coupons” or turns in line to obtain what “the bad ones” decide you need. If you want to skip the line, or get more, there is always the phrase “isn’t there another way we can fix this, Mr. bureaucrat?” There are two ways. One is to pay the bribe. The other one is to join the outer ring of the inner circle, join the machine of oppression. The power to make expedient and arbitrary decisions is generously distributed from the top down, and corruption becomes rampant and part of the system. But it can’t be called corruption because there is no moral code. Anything goes.

Food line at Venezuelan state supermarket. Soon coming to New York

Have you heard of The Moscow Purge Trials of 1936-1938 as a way for Stalin to eliminate his possible rivals? Were they wrong? Or about Stalin's Great Famine, known as the Holodomor? It was a policy-made famine in the Soviet Union from 1932 to 1933 that was used to “collectivize” the farmers of Ukraine. It has been estimated that four million people died. In a previous entry I mentioned the 250 million deaths around  the world caused by communism during the last 125 years. Was all that killing justified? The life of the common man has no value in such a system. Everything is decided in the “best interest of the state”, and of course, the ones that control the totalitarian state are “the worst ones” who decide what that is.

Can the word of a communist be believed or trusted? The answer is no. Liying and cheating to advance the goals of the state are an obligation,  not a choice. One US President dealing with the soviet leader Gorbachev said: “Trust but verify”; he really did not trust him. In a similar occasion, another US President said: “When I first met with Putin, I looked into his eyes, and I saw a soul. I trusted him.” Who do you think had the right approach? Which do you think really understood the lack of moral values of the communists? Putin does not even admit he is still a communist in disguise.

HOW THE MIXED ECONOMY WAS IMPLANTED

There is no objective or scientific definition of what a “mixed economy “ is. It is easy to understand the essence of the idea, but there are no details. Does any combination qualify? It is a plastic model that can take any possible proportions of what it pretends to mix: a free market economy and the coercive power of the state apparatus to intervene in it. It is an ambiguous concept that lends itself to confusion. I propose that it is on purpose. Another vehicle to advance the “conditions for revolution”, or for quiet submission through the electoral process.

It is another mask, a publicity stunt, a spin that is useful to hide the truth: Marxism was a fraud! Socialism has failed! The term mixed-economy is so imprecise it has been called many names: the middle-way, the third way, developmental economy, the socialist market economy, the social market economy, the Nordic model… We were just exposed to the latest re-branding with BIDENOMICS which aimed to advance THE NEW DEAL of war times.

The concept was expediently promoted out of convenience by the European socialist organizations that realized their economic theories had failed. They rejected the idea that the regimes under Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini were the result of their Marxist foundations. They needed another ending. Led by the British Fabians that were not dispersed by WW II and replicated by bands of German communists and socialists that took refuge in New England’s universities, the new mask was devised.

From the perspective of branding, it has many attributes: It sounds reasonable, it looks peaceful after so much war and political conflict, it seems promising of the best of two worlds, and most of it was ready. It also came along with boatloads of US dollars to clean the rubble and finance the reconstruction, all thanks to the American Keynesian socialist planners of Harvard and the US Treasury. A depressed and squalid continent on its knees was grateful to the American GIs and to the magic of Keynes.

Vintage poster of the Marshall Plan 1948

The Marshall Plan, the World Bank, the IBRD -International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the IMF - International Monetary Fund and an army of bureaucrats were attached to the allied occupational forces in Europe to transition the controls over the economies from the military commands to the civilian authorities.

NY Attorney General Letitia James at a rally for Communist Candidate for NY Mayor
 Zoran Mandani in which she endorsed him.
Has the time come for a communist Mayor in the Capital of Capitalism?
Is it the time for Communism to be elected in America? October 2025