ILLUSIONS, HALF-TRUTHS AND MASKS: Keywords: Fascism, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Ayn Rand, Hayek, Keynes, socialism, communism, Fabian Society, Marshall Plan, New Deal, Harvard
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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| 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.
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| The ancient Roman Fasces on the right, symbol of Law and Order |
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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?
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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 already . 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.
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| 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.
