Yet, there they are: Americans socialists going gaga over self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, wishing that he had been elected president, and exclaiming that he would have saved America with his socialist programs.
This is all quite bizarre.
After all, look at Venezuela. You couldn’t find a better example of a socialist system. Yet, look at the results: misery, suffering, poverty, chaos, crisis, conflict, tyranny, and violence.
What do socialists say about Venezuela? They say that the problem in Venezuela is not socialism but rather not enough socialism. If the government is able to stomp out the last vestiges of private economic activity in Venezuela, they say, happy days will finally arrive in that country.
With all due respect, that is so utterly ridiculous. The more the Venezuelan government has moved down the road toward more governmental control over economic activity, the worse things have gotten. Therefore, the notion that if the government will just move down that road some more, things will get better is, well, quite irrational.
Moreover, all we have to do is look at North Korea. It is a socialist’s dream. The government there owns and controls everything. Yet, like Venezuela, it too is mired in misery, suffering, poverty, chaos, crisis, conflict, tyranny, and violence. Surely, American socialists wouldn’t say that the key to North Korea’s problems is more socialism. It would be hard to get more socialism in a society in which the government controls 99 percent of economic activity.
Consider China, which is ruled by a communist regime. China has the same type of economic system that the North Koreans and Venezuelans have — a socialist one, where the government owns, controls, or dominates economic activity. For years, China was characterized my misery, poverty, chaos, conflict, violence, tyranny, and suffering.
Americans socialists would have counseled China to adopt even more socialism to arrive at economic prosperity. China rejected that road. Instead, the communist regime drastically reduced its control over economic activity.
The result in China of moving away from socialism? A dramatic increase in economic prosperity and a tremendous rise in people’s standard of living.
That’s not to say, of course, that China is a libertarian paradise. The state continues to play a dominant role in the economy. And it’s political system continues to be dictatorial and tyrannical. It’s simply to say that as a government moves down the road toward less economic control, the better off people are economically.
Here is the big problem facing the American people, including American socialists. Mostly as a consequence of having received their schooling in government schools, Americans honestly believe that they have been born and raised in a “capitalist” or “free-enterprise” economic system. If you ask any ordinary American whether he is a socialist, especially ones who are conservative-oriented, they will recoil and exclaim, “Of course not! I’m a capitalist. I believe in America’s free-enterprise system. I even sometimes attend meetings of the Chamber of Commerce in my community.”
What they don’t realize is that the indoctrination that they received in those public schools has caused them to live the rest of their lives in what can only be called a “life of the lie.”
