Who doesn’t like free stuff? Capitalism, however, is not the villain. Without capital (funding), there would be no economy, free or state-run. The issue, therefore, is not between capitalism and socialism. It is between free enterprise and economic liberty on the one hand and a state-run, often totalitarian, market on the other.
North Korea and Cuba also use capital. Both are, in a way, state capitalisms: the state has all the money; the citizens are the oppressed serfs. The state provides for them, to an extent, but is careful to do so as stingily as possible.
The socialist or communist state’s first concern will not be delivering services; it will be cutting costs. As the money that comes in becomes scarcer — who is making money, the state? The first casualty invariably ends up being quality. Yes, there is free healthcare — if you can wait months for an operation, and if you qualify for it under the state’s cost-cutting rationing. Are you too old or too sick, or too medically compromised in some other way, and is someone younger and healthier more worthy of receiving the care than you?
Yes, you receive free housing, but who will guarantee that there will be sufficient heat in the winter, clean running water, that the garbage will be collected, that there will be no vermin, or that the elevator will work.
Under communism, land belongs only to the state. The price is immaterial. Ask the “kulaks,” peasant farmers in Ukraine whose land and grain were stolen by Stalin’s Soviet Union during the Holodomor in 1932-33, with the result that five million people in Ukraine starved to death.
The DSA candidates do not describe themselves as communists. What does that mean, however, when many of the DSA’s official policies are the essence of communism?
Unlike the DSA, communist leaders from Lenin to Mao to Castro did not aspire to abolish the police, the military or the border patrol. If anything, these totalitarian rulers expanded the police, the prisons, and the military. They were more than happy to put millions in prison or the gulags while widening the powers of the police and security forces…
What is being overlooked at the moment is that the current communist rulers from Cuba to China would love the DSA to abolish the police and border patrol in America, empty the prisons, open the borders, and shut down oil and gas production. Those moves would thoroughly cripple the United States and significantly weaken its ability to defend itself — both internally and externally. No self-respecting communist government would ever adopt such crazy policies.
The country is debating whether the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the new face of the Democrat Party. There are two impediments, however, to accurately discussing what the DSA is all about.
The first is that Americans are learning about DSA through the lens of the dominant media — what Rush Limbaugh often called “the drive-by media.” Largely missing is a balanced media source despite the almost universal use of the term “mainstream media” to describe the current collection of highly partisan and slanted journalists from whom most Americans get their news. While “mainstream” implies balanced and informative, most of the dominant media of today are neither.
The second impediment is an assumption that advocates of the DSA are simply against a “capitalist” system they associate with greed, and instead favor of what they consider a benign, compassionate “socialist” economy where stuff is largely free. Who doesn’t like free stuff? Capitalism, however, is not the villain. Without capital (funding), there would be no economy, free or state-run. The alternative is to go back to a barter system: I’ll paint your apartment, you give me wood for heating my house.
The issue, therefore, is not between capitalism and socialism. It is between free enterprise and economic liberty on the one hand and a state-run, often totalitarian, market on the other.
Capitalism is not synonymous with free enterprise or economic liberty. The 1776 economic manifesto The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith never used the word. It was Karl Marx who used “capitalism” as a highly pejorative description of the economies of the affluent West. North Korea and Cuba also use capital. Both are, in a way, state capitalisms: the state has all the money; the citizens are the oppressed serfs. The state provides for them, to an extent, but is careful to do so as stingily as possible.
The socialist or communist state’s first concern will not be delivering services; it will be cutting costs. As the money that comes in becomes scarcer — who is making money, the state? The first casualty invariably ends up being quality. Yes, there is free healthcare — if you can wait months for an operation, and if you qualify for it under the state’s cost-cutting rationing. Are you too old or too sick, or too medically compromised in some other way, and is someone younger and healthier more worthy of receiving the care than you?
Yes, you receive free housing, but who will guarantee that there will be sufficient heat in the winter, clean running water, that the garbage will be collected, that there will be no vermin, or that the elevator will work.
Under communism, land belongs only to the state. The price is immaterial. Ask the “kulaks,” peasant farmers in Ukraine whose land and grain were stolen by Stalin’s Soviet Union during the Holodomor in 1932-33, with the result that five million people in Ukraine starved to death.
The DSA candidates do not describe themselves as communists. What does that mean, however, when many of the DSA’s official policies are the essence of communism?:
- “[C]ollectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation…” (source)
- “[N]ationalize and socialize (through worker and community ownership and control) institutions of monetary policy, insurance, real estate, and finance…” (source)
- “Social housing must first be a redistribution of land from landowners to the landless… Social housing must expropriate property from capitalists and deliver it to the working class…” (source)
Members of the DSA, while not precisely following what communist enemies of the USA want to see happen in America, are nevertheless stooges — dupes — of our communist enemies — what during the Cold War were known as “useful idiots.” Walter Duranty of the New York Times wrote from the Soviet Union in the 1930s that “no actual starvation or deaths from starvation” in Ukraine and “there is no famine,” and he treated the Moscow Trials as justified and credible. Prior to this, shamefully, Duranty had won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize, still unrevoked, for his reporting of fabrications from the Soviet Union.
Unlike the DSA, communist leaders from Lenin to Mao to Castro did not aspire to abolish the police, the military or the border patrol. If anything, these totalitarian rulers expanded the police, the prisons, and the military. They were more than happy to put millions in prison or the gulags while widening the powers of the police and security forces, whether the KGB, MININT or MMS. Certainly, they all markedly enlarged their military and security forces. How else could communist nations have killed some 120 million of their own people, just to secure and sustain power?
What is being overlooked at the moment is that the current communist rulers from Cuba to China would love the DSA to abolish the police and border patrol in America, empty the prisons, open the borders, and shut down oil and gas production. Those moves would thoroughly cripple the United States and significantly weaken its ability to defend itself — both internally and externally. No self-respecting communist government would ever adopt such crazy policies.
Supporters of the DSA appear to think that mob violence — such as was used in the summer of 2020 and currently characterizes the assault on immigration law enforcement — will enable them to seize control of the House of Representatives, then the Senate, then the presidency itself. If the Supreme Court is a barrier to the totalitarian plans of the DSA — whose plans would be so easy to implement if all that were needed was a simple majority vote in the House — the logical plan is to abolish the checks and balances of in the US constitution to fundamentally transform the US.
The DSA appears impatient with the world. Their utopia cannot wait. A thoughtful discussion of America’s future or reasonable analysis of the DSA’s objectives will not happen. Any such debate would leave these candidates in the ditch. They argue for abolishing the police on Monday, they deny they said it on Tuesday. No discussion of ramifications. The drive-by media remain complicit in the rise of the DSA by ignoring or covering for them.
What can we expect? Commentator Ryan Mauro notes that New York City’s DSA Mayor Zohran Mamdani and “chaos” funder George Soros both admire Slavoj Žižek, whose In Defence of Lost Causes calls for the return of the French Revolution’s guillotine and what he calls “emancipatory terror.” The goal, it seems, is the destruction of the West, to be replaced with Stalinist communism. Apart from their projected multiple trillions of dollars in new government spending that they cannot pay for, the DSA foreign policy agenda is also scary. The DSA seems to be pushing a global intifada, an embrace of Hamas terrorism, a wholesale rejection of Israel, and on top of all that, “defunding” the US Department of Defense.
The goals of the former Soviet Union are still being pursued — not by the KGB or the Red Army but by DSA hucksters who sadly are nothing but suckers promising a false utopia to be built on the ruins of America.
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