Tag Archives: Socialism

Posted in Civil Liberties, Cronyism, Government, History, Philosophy, Politics

Tagged Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Socialism

Twilight Zone USA, by Vasko Kohlmayer

Posted on June 19, 2020 | 1 comment

We’ve entered another dimension. From Vasko Kohlmayer at lewrockwell.com:

Growing up in a communist regime was like living in a twilight zone where everything had gone topsy-turvy. If you’ve never been to a twilight zone, it is a most curious phenomenon. It comes into existence when in a certain country or a geographic location a blatantly false narrative takes hold of the collective psyche.

The narrative of the twilight zone of my youth went roughly as follows: Socialism was the greatest socio-economic system ever devised while capitalism was very, very bad. The Soviet Union was a paradisiacal land of freedom, opportunity, prosperity and happiness. The United States, on the other hand, was a country of exploitation and oppression where most people were bound, destitute and miserable. This official narrative was constantly and relentlessly promulgated from every quarter of our twilight zone: television, radio, textbooks, arts, newspapers, magazines, etc. Needless to say, the narrative ran in complete contravention of reality. The actual truth was that socialism was no good. On the other hand, most people in the United States were free, quite prosperous and reasonably happy while the Soviet Union was pretty much an all-around hellhole.

Those who attempted to point out the truth or question the authorized storyline were promptly silenced, suppressed and punished. As a result of the swift and efficient censorship the false narrative prevailed and took a deep hold on the societal mind. And because it served as the paradigm for reality, it distorted and turned upside down almost every aspect of life: the good was bad and bad was good; white was black and black was white. The values and ethics in the twilight zone became inverted.

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Posted in Crime, Governments, History, Insurrection, Politics, Propaganda, race relations

Tagged George Floyd riots, Racism, Socialism

Governments Have Crippled the World’s Economies. Revolution May Soon Follow. By Thorstein Polleit

Posted on June 7, 2020 | Leave a comment

Massive fiat debt creation is not going to save the day for global economies; the Greater Depression has arrived. All sorts of revolutionary activity and insurrection will follow. From Thorstein Polleit at mises.org:

The world seems to be on fire. A couple of months ago, the economic upswing was still firmly established, production expanded, and unemployment was declining. It all changed with the advent of the coronavirus or, to be precise: things turned really sour with the politically dictated lockdowns. As a reaction to the spread of the virus, governments in many countries ordered shops and firms to shut down and people to stay home. The inevitable result was a close to complete breakdown of the economic system. Hundreds of millions of people were thrown into outright despair; in India alone 120 million workers lost their jobs in April 2020.

The economic collapse sent the unbacked paper money system into a tailspin. Borrowers were unable to service their debt, and banks unwilling to roll over maturing loans, let alone extend new funds to struggling debtors. The entire credit pyramid was about to come crashing down. To prevent this from happening, governments and their central banks went “all in,” providing huge amounts of money to pay for people’s lost incomes and firms’ evaporating profits. Of course, governments do not have the money that they have promised to spend.

Central banks have started running the electronic printing presses, issuing great amounts of newly created money into the banking and financial sector and also injecting new balances into people’s accounts held with banks. In other words: as production contracts heavily, the quantity of money is rising strongly. This is, no doubt, an inflationary policy, for, if anything, inflation must be understood as an increase in the quantity of money. One possible outcome of a policy of increasing the quantity of money is price inflation: the increase in the money prices of goods and services.

Posted in banking, Business, Capitalism, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Currencies, Debt, Economy, Governments, Insurrection

Tagged central bank policies, Economic crisis, Socialism

Study Shows 50% Of Conservatives Would Switch To Socialism For A Six-Pack Of Beer And A Pizza, from The Babylon Bee

Posted on March 19, 2020 | 1 comment

.—According to sources, Trump is just kicking himself after promising $1000 to every American. According to a new study, 50% of conservatives would give up freedom and fiscal responsibility for much less!

After a survey of Americans who identify as conservative, it was revealed that many people would switch to socialism for less than $500, or maybe even a six-pack of beer and a pizza. It would have to be a good pizza though – like a high-quality Chicago style deep dish and a great craft brew. Freedom isn’t free, after all.

The Trump administration is currently re-drafting its legislation to send pizza coupons and beer tickets to every American adult in exchange for another 1 trillion added to the national debt. Baptists are revolting against this legislation since they allegedly don’t drink beer. In response, the Trump administration will be offering a delicious mess of pottage as an alternative. It will be a good mess of pottage though – like a high-quality stew with organic ingredients from Whole Foods. Yum!

https://babylonbee.com/news/study-shows-50-of-conservatives-would-switch-to-socialism-for-a-six-pack-of-beer-and-a-pizza

Posted in Civil Liberties, Humor

Tagged Conservatives, Socialism

Socialism’s Past, by Walter E. Williams

Posted on March 18, 2020 | 1 comment

Socialist dictators always say nice things before they get power, and do all sorts of horrifying things once they get it. From Walter Williams at theburningplatform.com:

Socialism's Past

Senator Bernie Sanders’ call for socialism has resonated among many Americans, particularly young Americans. They’ve fallen prey to the idea of a paradise here on Earth where things are free and there’s little want. But socialists never reveal what turns out to be their true agenda. Let’s look at the kind of statements they used to gain power. You’ll note that all of their slogans before gaining power bore little relation to the facts after they had power.

Vladimir Lenin promised, “Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing.” That’s Friedrich Engel’s prediction about “the withering away of the state.” Lenin also promised, “Communism is Soviet power plus electrification,” and “No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.” Lenin’s successor, Joseph Stalin, said, “Advance towards socialism cannot but cause the exploiting elements to resist the advance, and the resistance of the exploiters cannot but lead to the inevitable sharpening of the class struggle.” He also said, “Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union,” and that “Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.”

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Economy, Governments, History, Politics, Propaganda

Tagged Dictators, Socialism

Hoppe: The In-Depth Interview, by Hans Hoppe and Jeff Deist

Posted on February 29, 2020 | Leave a comment

Hans Hoppe is an interesting thinker. From Hoppe and Deist at mises.org:

[This interview with Jeff Deist and Hans Hoppe will appear in the upcoming issue of The Austrian (March–April 2020).]

JEFF DEIST: Your recent talk in Vienna mentioned growing up happy but poor, the son of East German parents who had been driven west during the Cold War by the Soviets. Can you elaborate on the lasting impact their experience had on you, in terms of how you view state power and its attendant evils? Are you in some ways still influenced by their “eastern” roots?

HANS-HERMANN HOPPE: The fact that my parents were both refugees, ending up in the West by the accident of WWII, driven away and separated from their original homes in Soviet-occupied East Germany, played a huge role in our family life. In particular the expropriation of my mother’s family and its expulsion from house and home by the Soviets, in 1946, as so-called East Elbean Junkers, was a constantly recurring topic at home and assumed even more importance after the collapse, in 1989, of East Germany and the following German “reunification.” My mother, as many other victims of communist expropriations, then sought and hoped for the restitution of her property—in which case I would have been set for life. However, as I already knew and correctly predicted by then, this was not going to happen. There was to be no justice. But my parents were shocked and outraged.

The numerous trips we took to visit various relatives in East Germany confirmed my parents’ judgment of the Soviet system. Shortages, waiting lines, empty stores, inferior products, and lousy services. All around controls, spies, and informants. Everywhere grey ugliness and decay. A prison wall built around the whole country to prevent anyone from escaping. And commie-proles droning on endlessly about the great successes achieved under their leadership.

Yet as a little boy and a teenager I did not understand the reason for all this mischief and misery. Indeed, the East German experience did little if anything to shake my own leftist convictions at the time. East Germany, I thought, was just the wrong type of socialism, with the wrong people at the helm.

Posted in Capitalism, Civil Liberties, Economics, Governments, Law, Morality, Philosophy

Tagged Austrian economics, Hans Hoppe, Socialism

Are We Seriously Debating Capitalism vs. Socialism Again? by Jeffrey A. Tucker

Posted on February 25, 2020 | Leave a comment

Both on paper and in real life capitalism is orders of magnitude better for most people than socialism. From Jeffrey A. Tucker at aier.org:

Posted in Business, Capitalism, Government, History, Labor, Morality, Philosophy, Politics

Tagged Capital, capitalism, Marx, Socialism

When the world became unrecognizable in less than a decade, by Simon Black

Posted on February 24, 2020 | 1 comment

Things can change in a hurry. From Simon Black at sovereignman.com:

In the year 1520, exactly 500 years ago, a German scholar named Johan Schoner completed a map of the world that was widely considered to be humanity’s most advanced understanding of geography at that time.

To us, Schoner’s map is pretty amusing.

There’s scarcely any American continent. Instead he drew some amorphous blobs to mark Brazil and the ‘West Indies’. And there’s a very narrow body of water where the Pacific Ocean is supposed to be, separating Brazil and India.

Obviously we know this is totally wrong. But it was science’s best understanding of the world in 1520.

Then, in 1529, a Venetian named Giovanni Ramusio created an updated map based on the various explorations and discoveries throughout the 1520s.

Ramusio’s map shows the eastern coastline of North and South America, from Newfoundland to the tip of Argentina, and the west coast from Peru through Mexico, with incredible precision and accuracy.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, History, Politics

Tagged Socialism

Marxist Dreams and Soviet Realities, by Ralph Raico

Posted on February 24, 2020 | Leave a comment

You can always tell true socialists and communists because they refuse to talk about how their theories have worked out in practice…or the resultant body counts. From Ralph Raico at lewrockwell.com:

This essay was originally published in 1988, by the Cato Institute, Washington, DC. It is collected in Great Wars and Great Leaders (2010), chap. 4: “Marxist Dreams and Soviet Realities.”

The sharp contrast that Alexis de Tocqueville drew in 1835 between the United States and Tsarist Russia—”the principle of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude”1—became much sharper after 1917, when the Russian Empire was transformed into the Soviet Union.

Like the United States, the Soviet Union is a nation founded on a distinct ideology. In the case of America, the ideology was fundamentally Lockean liberalism; its best expressions are the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution. The Ninth Amendment, in particular, breathes the spirit of the worldview of late eighteenth-century America.2 The Founders believed that there exist natural, individual rights that, taken together, constitute a moral framework for political life. Translated into law, this framework defines the social space within which men voluntarily interact; it allows for the spontaneous coordination and ongoing mutual adjustment of the various plans that the members of society form to guide and fill their lives.