Many rank-and-file statists prescribe the wrong cure for our economic woes because they don’t understand the disease.

“Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” said Barack Obama’s chief-of-staff, Rahm Emanuel, late last year. Mindful of this advice, the left is using our current economic woes to resurrect socialism’s star – and, by extension, communism’s (Marx identified socialism as a transitional stage to communism) – by bemoaning the supposed pitfalls of “capitalism.”

Unfortunately, scared people often glom onto statism’s simplistic message. A little while back I wrote about communism’s newfound appeal with a younger generation which, divorced from history, can easily repeat mistakes of the past.

Of course, their elders aren’t helping. A case in point is, “Systemic Failure: Capitalism ‘Lays an Egg,’” by Stephen Lendman, whose musings, as his picture attests, cannot be chalked up to youthful naiveté. I suppose, to alter socialist George Bernard Shaw’s famous line, you could say that sometimes age is wasted on the aged.

In fairness, Lendman’s piece is no unbridled endorsement of the Red Menace; however, it does contain a nod to Marx, who Lendman said did foresee “much of what’s happening today.” The writer then presents six supposedly-prescient Marxist predictions. Here’s each one, followed by my commentary.  

1. “the inevitable monopoly control of production, commerce, and finance . . .”

And who controls such arenas under communism? In a relatively free market, there’s no such monopoly. Instead, there are many business entities controlling such things. Sure, each business is managed by relatively few, but a ship must have someone at the helm.

Under communism there’s a true monopoly. All the above arenas are controlled by one entity: the government. 

2. “a reserve army of exploited low-paid labor . . .”

Yup, communism.

3. “a class struggle between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ . . .”

True, this communism eliminates. There’s no struggle between the haves within government and have-nots without. That’s the beauty of totalitarianism.

By the way, under communism, you truly have haves and have-nots. In a relatively free economy, it’s more accurate to say that you have doers and do-nots.

4. “capitalism's internal contradictions: exploiting and alienating the many for the few . . .”

Well, it’s great this never happens under communism.

5. “its crisis-prone nature: unstable, ‘anarchic,’ ungovernable, self-destructive with booms creating bubbles creating busts, then depressions . . .”

Yes, communism does eliminate ups-and-downs – by eliminating the ups. Since there are no booms, there can be neither bubbles nor busts, just constant depression. Communism provides the stability of hopelessness and stagnation.

6. “its inevitable decay and demise because a system so corrupted can't endure; a socialist revolution (he believed) will replace it based on greater freedom, inclusion, and equality.”

It’s wonderful how history bears this out. Communism provides freedom from industriousness, thorough inclusion of Big Brother in your life, and equal sharing of misery – of which communism provides an abundance – among the masses (not among those who are “more equal than others”).

Yet I cannot sarcastically dismiss the above and leave it at that. Many find Marxist predictions convincing because they do seem to apply to our free market system. And, then, many find glaring examples of greed – a la Bernie Madoff – and inequality unsettling. So what’s the answer? A clue is found in what I’ve illustrated – that the same problems manifest themselves in communist systems.

The mistake here is a common one: holding the critiqued object up to a standard of perfection. This is used to demonize not just free markets but also things such as Western culture and the United States. And insofar as people are well-meaning when they do this, it’s because they live in the Land of Should. There “should” never have been slavery, so America is awful; there “should” never have been colonization, so the West is wanting; and, then, there “should” not be greed, so free markets are folly.

Such people are conflating things that have nothing to do with one another. They’re confusing sinners with systems.

People are ridden with imperfection, which is well-defined by the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, sloth, gluttony, envy, wrath, lust and greed. This “spiritual illness” exists and causes problems regardless of time, place, government or economic system and spares no group. Commissars are affected same as corporate executives.

It’s as with physical disease. Saying we need socialism because too many people are greedy is a bit like saying we need rationed, socialized medicine because too many people are sick. It’s an incorrect prescription resulting from a bad diagnosis. Since greed is a spiritual/moral problem, it requires a cure of the same species. The solution is God’s grace, not government’s iron glove.

The only economic task is to devise a system that minimizes the negative effects of man’s sin. And nothing fits the bill better than the free market.

I’ll explain this by dividing people into two basic groups (although it’s more of a continuum): the altruistic, of which there are few; and the self-serving, of which there are many. The altruistic – the world’s Mother Teresas – will perform good works in any system. But what of the great masses who, absent economic incentive, will not?

This is the beauty of the free market. It ensures that not just the godly few but also the worldly many will serve me even if they don’t care a whit about me. They may not have a spiritual incentive, but they have a monetary one to provide me with all the goods and services that have afforded us a lifestyle unrivalled in the annals of history.

This brings us to a fatal flaw of communism: if people were good enough for a communist government to work, we wouldn’t need government. They would be angels, without need of police, courts or a military.

It also illustrates why communism is a fatal mistake: “from each according to his means and to each according to his needs” always results in fewer people with means and more people with needs.

Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website.

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Pat Henry said:

Made-off I had a friend allude to this, implying that capitalism needed regulated. Well, capitalism is not an answer, but free markets is an answer. Say what? I told my friend that NO WORLD can keep people from greed. But in a good world, run under God's law, people could be free to do voluntary business, and keep legitimate profits. No regulation is needed. In a good world, we can have laws that are based on a moral code (not an attempt to regulate sinners into a Utopia). Simply put, punish law-breakers, left or right. We can never regulate greed from hearts. But we can punish those who break laws. (Regulations are NOT lawful laws; nope, not even under our Constiution.)

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March 07, 2009
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MarkGlen said:

	Law has its place. ...but if you are saddled with a banking corporation like the Fed you better bind it down with law. That is what I have against Libertarian doctrine. Libertarians like libertines don't seem to want to bind anything, even a rattle snake.
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March 07, 2009 | url
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us and them said:

	... We don't need more regulation, just better enforcement of the regulations already in place
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March 08, 2009
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MarkGlen said:

	A two prong attack We needed more laws binding the Fed. We should have worked not only to outlaw the Fed but to bind it by law until we could get it replaced with a better system. One law in particular: Make it illegal for the Fed to charge interest on money it loans to the Government. The libertarian concept won't work.
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MarkGlen said:

The Libertarian concept is not practical God tried the Libertarian concept in the Garden of Eden. It didn't work. He places a certain tree in the Garden and told Adam and Eve not to eat of it. You know the story: They ate of it and all mankind is born in sin. And as a result God did away with the tree and never again used the libertarian concept. He even kept Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life lest mankind should live forever in this awful state of sin. One local libertarian newspaper editor in our area, he has since moved off somewhere else, wanted to legalize dope and place a heavy penalty on any crime one may commit while under its influence. The penalty is a great idea, but yet a greater idea would be to not legalize dope. Narcotics with a heavy punishment is like the tree of life and the heavy punishment it carried. God did away with the tree. If narcotics were already legal then place a heavy penalty on it until narcotics can be outlawed. A paradox: The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees us the right to keep armed. So the enemy within while trying to do away with the Amendment also keeps getting laws passed. These laws are designed to restrict the Amendment's potency.

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MarkGlen said:

Correction to my last post "One local libertarian newspaper editor in our area, he has since moved off somewhere else, wanted to legalize dope and place a heavy penalty on any crime one may commit while under its influence. The penalty is a great idea, but yet a greater idea would be to not legalize dope. Narcotics with a heavy punishment is like the tree of life and the heavy punishment it carried. God did away with the tree." "tree of life" in the above sentence should read "a certain tree" or "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis 2:17).

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