The Socialist Dream, in which Reality Always Intrudes

The Socialist Dream, in which Reality Always Intrudes by The Elephant's Child

October 26, 2018, 10:56 pm
Filed under: Africa, Asia, Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Developing Nations, Economics, Economy, Education, Environment, Europe, Freedom, History, Humor, Law, National Security, Regulation, The United States, Unemployment | Tags: Karl Marx's Big Idea, The Socialist Dream, Why It Didn't Work

“How is it possible for any sentient human being to have lived through the 20th century without coming to understand that property rights are the basis of any rights that human beings have ever been able to secure, and that far from conflicting with human needs, profits are the only practical engine ever devised that even half succeeded inn fulfilling them.
Such willful ignorance does not stem from lack of intelligence, but has a deeper source in human desires that can only be satisfied by  religious faith. The socialist dream of achieving a kingdom of heaven on earth is as old as Eden.  It is the idea of putting a human design on the impersonal structures of the social order beginning with the economic market and extending to the constitutional order. In wishing this, socialists fail to understand that a market that human beings cannot control and a political process they are bound to respect are the very disciplines that human beings require in order to be human.”
…………………………………………………David Horowitz:  Jewish World Review 1/3/2000

“Ever since Karl Marx sat in the Reading Room of the British Library writing Das Kapital, great Western thinkers have been obsessed with discovering the flaw in capitalism, a kind of negative Holy Grail for the knights of progressivism. For Marx, capitalism functioned only by exploiting the proletariat. But the proletariat got richer and bought homes in the suburbs. So the next generation of Marxists turned their attention to “colonialism:” capitalism functioned by looting the West’s imperial possessions. But the West decolonized in the Fifties and Sixties, and they didn’t get any poorer,
only the colonies did. So the Marxists invented “neo-colonialism:”capitalism functioned by informally exploiting the nominally independent developing world. But the dramatically differing rates at which developing economies developed in Asia, Africa and Latin America seemed to have little to do with external forces and a lot to do with obvious local factors.
By the time the UN met at Durban, the grievance-mongers were down to slavery. Europe and America had built their wealth on the slave trade. By this theory, the United Kingdom, which was the first to abolish slavery – in the British Isles in 1772, and throughout the Empire in 1833 – ought to be an economic basket case, while the Sudan, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, Ghana and the Ivory Coast, to name just a few of the countries in which slavery is currently practiced ought to be rolling in dough. Instead, of course, large parts of the post-colonial world are more impoverished than they have ever been.”
…………………………………………………………Mark Steyn: The New Criterion, 2/2002

“From around 1970, supposed environmental degradation has played a useful role for the Left as proof of the many wrongs of capitalism. Marx’s theory of exploitation of the workers has long been disproved by increasing affluence among the working class. Lenin tried to substitute imperialism as an explanation, but as most colonies gained independence and many showed robust growth, this didn’t do the trick. In the 1970s hope rose that environmental disaster eventually would led to the destruction of capitalism. Hope dies hard, which explains the persistent refusal to accept that most environmental indicators are improving.
…A triumph for the European right will probably not stop the drift towards ever more draconian environmental regulations founded on weak science. Only a shift in public perceptions and priorities can reverse this trend. Given balanced information and realizing they have to bear the burden of environmental policies themselves, the public are probably more likely to be leading such a reversal than tottering politicians, left or right.”
…………………………….Jan Arild Snoen, Oslo. Tech Central Station – Europe 6/10/02

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