The New York Analysis of Policy and Government continues its examination of the growing popularity of socialism in America, despite a century of failure.
Socialist governments have been established in virtually every inhabited continent and in every type of nation, ten decades provides an adequate time frame for an accurate analysis. Almost every variant of the philosophy has been emplaced at one time or another.
George Reisman of the Mises Institute makes a point that many university history and political science departments consider utterly taboo: the reality that one variant of socialism was Germany’s National Socialism. Few even bother noting that the full name of the Nazi Party was “der Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiters Partei — in English translation: the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.” The nightmarish actions of that regime—unfettered by checks and balances– continue to haunt humanity.
The Third Reich was indeed a socialist government. Reisman points out that “private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners. De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.”
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Evidence across the globe and over a century clearly indicates that the answer to these questions has not been favorable to the proponents of socialism.
Socialist nations as diverse as Russia, Cambodia, and Venezuela have endured exceptional damage to the well-being of their citizenry and the health of their economies. Some had hoped that China’s experiment in promoting consumerism within a socialist state would produce more salutary results. However, as President Xi consolidates and enhances his power and steers his government back to the more repressive environment of Maoist days, that hope has been dashed. Even at its best, China’s government was always a harsh oppressor of human rights. It should also not be forgotten that China’s economic progress depends heavily on selling goods made by cheap labor to more capitalist-governed nations.
The Report Continues Tomorrow