THE MYTH OF INEVITABLE SOCIALISM | 2006-07-26
Let me explain to you why Communism doesn't work. But first, let me explain why everybody assumed it DID work.
In the 1950s, every "intellectual" took it for granted that socialism, meaning central control of all the means of production and exchange, was "inevitable." Ther was no future for small business or individual creativeness. The idea was that when you look at all the waste and inefficiency of capitalism, wtih small businesses being created and dying, the whole thing would work better if you cut through all the complications and just had everything produced cooperatively, without all the wasteful competition and waste.
Everybody assumed that Communism was more EFFICIENT. Every year, using indices I explained below, every Commmunist economy announced how it was growing wildly and gaining on the USA. I remember that one journal explained htat the Chinese economy was not YET at that stage, and that was why Chinese annual reports explained how they were gaining on the British economy. But all of them were overtaking the West. That, I repeat, was TAKEN FOR GRANTED.
The ONLY disagreement inthe economic community was 1) Whether the inevitable socialist future cold be democratic and 2) a charming nostalgia.
The charming nostalgic admitted that state socialism was more efficient. It admitted that the "centrally planned economies" would get bigger than the inefficient Western economies and the West wou d fall as the socialist economies truimphed. But the mostalgic crowd said it was too bad. They were pining for the Good Old Days or individualism. They all agree that Stalin's Five Year Plans had been wildly successful, but "the success came at a huge human cost."
So some people did say socialism was a bad idea, but they all agreed it was EFFICIENT and therefore INEVITABLE. Anybody who didn't agree with that obvious proposition was considered a nut case and didn't get promoted. The CIA and all Western intelligence agencies went along with this assessment.
It was not until the early 1960s that a few economists, especially one of mine, started pointing out that Communism was a bureaucratic mess where the economy got worse every year. They were whoputed down. At the University of Virginia, they were removed. But they won anyway. That was at the same time that every mainline geneticist and psychologist insisted that the innate IQ level of all raes was absolutely equal, and anyone who challenged that got fired.
We won BOTH battles. No one insists the Communist system was efficient today, and no one insists that the races are innately equal today. No one even bothers to argue either point, and everybody has forgotten anybody ever said either of these things.
Check it out.
As I say, you know when the other side has completely lost a point because every respectable cosnervative suddenly forgets they ever made it. That is what respectable conservatives get paid for.
All this is leading to an important world-view that I want to share with you. It is ABOUT economics, but please keep in mind it is a WORLD view, not economic quibbling. Bear with me through the next piuece and don't shout about how boring it is, because it is necessary to understand where the winners for the minds of the future are coming from.
I will begin hitting on that in the next article. It will be WORK for me, and I do not need people shouting at me that I am getting lost in economics.
PATIENCE!
Back then no one in the mainline economic community