Scrap Socialism, Part III

How many more times do we have to try an idea before we decide that the results are unacceptable?

 H/T Victims of Communism

A multi-count indictment of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Socialist ideologies as justification for their abolition.
In Parts I and Part II of this dissertation, we made the case for the abolition of the modern day slavery of the collectivism. Part I presented the proof that Limited government and the economic liberty of the free-market are far superior to the unlimited authoritarian government and economic slavery of the socialist ideologies. Part II Eviscerated the ‘That wasn’t real socialism’ lie while examining the early history of these ideas and their abject failure down through the centuries.
Part III will attempt to briefly detail the sins of socialism, because one could easily write a whole book about the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the collectivist ideologies and the case for their abolition.

“Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.” – President Calvin Coolidge

500 year old ideas relabeled as new and being ‘social’.

One could argue that there are really only two basic political ideologies of either the individual or the collective. Leftists are very adapt at word selection, and in this case they prefer to use ‘social’ instead of collective or communist for that matter. So, in the flowery language of the Left and with the suffix ‘ism’ added it is ‘individual’ ism versus ‘social’ ism.
Yes, this is how these decrepitly old ideas are being repackaged and sold to a new generation brought up on ‘social’ media and similar phrases. Individualism subtly implies self-interest or being selfish, or ego(t)ism [German: ‘eigennutz’]. Contrast this with the almost subliminally positive terms of being ‘Social’ or ‘Sociable’ or for the ‘common good’ [German: ‘gemeinnutz’]. Years of social indoctrination have convinced a generation that this is a positive attribute. Witness the overuse of the term ‘Social Justice Warrior’ as something allegedly noble and good.

Socialism: Subjugation by Force.

Meanwhile, the dirty little secret of the socialist ideologies is that they require the individual to be subjugated by force to the collective in order to operate. Everyone’s property and liberty are to be sacrificed for the ‘common good’ by the threat or actual use of force. This was detailed by Milton Friedman in the short video ‘Socialism is Force’. The socialist ideologies cannot operate in any other manner, but this is dressed up as “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” [Liberty, Equality, Fraternity] or similar nonsensical boilerplate.
Consider the positive spin that Mayor Bill de Blasio placed on these ideas in an interview from last September in New York Magazine.

What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be. I think there’s a socialistic impulse, which I hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs. And I would, too. Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to the point that that’s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development.

Note the subtle positivity of the promise of the people collectively enjoying the fruits of someone else’s labour in having all manner of housing and other wonderful manifestations if not for those pesky property rights of the individual.
Further on in the interview he rips off the mask and revels in the wondrous benefits of authoritarianism with a “very, very powerful government”:

That’s a world I’d love to see, and I think what we have, in this city at least, are people who would love to have the New Deal back, on one level. They’d love to have a very, very powerful government, including a federal government, involved in directly addressing their day-to-day reality.

The implication is that everyone would love to have a centralised “Nanny state” that provides all kinds of freebies for the low-low price of their liberty and the property of a few individuals. All it takes is enough government force to run people’s lives, or as he put it: “directly addressing their day-to-day reality.”
The problem is that these Utopian fantasies is that there promises can never come to fruition. They are fundamentally contrary to economic logic and human nature. Worse still, the sins of socialism are a direct outgrowth of this subjugation of the individual to the collective.
The justification for the elimination of the Socialist ideologies.
The stirring words of Thomas Jefferson from the Declaration of Independence seemed to be the most appropriate in addressing the justification in the elimination of the socialist ideologies from the slate of viable governmental forms and the rightful conclusion to the age of experimentation:

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security”

Notwithstanding their flowery Utopian words and promises, the socialist ideologies for all intents and purposes begin as a colossal fraud against humanity and end with incomprehensible oppression and mass murder. Socialists must know that their pompous sales pitch of free health care, housing, college education and anything else they can think of can never be fulfilled. But this never stops them from trying to con a new generation to the siren song of free stuff. Not to mention the old saw of the state ‘withering away’ never happening in their base ideology’s checkered and dreadful past. If ever there was “a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism” it would have to be the socialist ideologies.
While it might seem strange and somewhat hypocritical for those of a conservatarian mindset to advocate what type of government a people can choose for themselves, at some point humanity should be able to determine which governmental form is superior and which should end up on the scrap heap of history. It is out of humanitarian compassion that we should want to stop some from making the same dreadful mistakes, so often repeated with horrific results.
The axiom of “One Man (or woman), One vote, ONCE” succinctly encapsulates the problem in the choice of collectivist governmental forms. Over the centuries, many a populace has fallen for the siren song of socialism and it’s unrealistic theory of a perfect “worker’s paradise”. Collectivists as a group tend to be long on promises and flimsy excuses instead of actual results.
The fact that force has to be used to implement these ideologies is never really discussed in the glossy brochures or manifestoes. By the time the promises have fallen short a bureaucratic behemoth will already be in place to intimidate, imprison or execute those who have become aware of the fraud being perpetrated. In his book on the Hungarian revolution in 1956 “The Bridge at Andau” , James A. Michener touched on this historic con game. This was also mentioned recently by Anatole Konstantin in an “Ask Me Anything” session on reddit as to why the Soviet union eventually collapsed. He stated:

”I think it was the spiritual crisis caused by discrepancy between the rosy propaganda and totalitarian reality that made the Soviet people lose faith in the system. I think there is a lesson in this for us.”

This is why these ideologies have to be banished as a form of government. There are many of forms of deception that are rightfully considered to be crimes. The socialist ideologies have a history of unmatched crimes against humanity, shouldn’t that alone be the apt justification for their abolishment?
The Sins of Socialism.
The final nail in the coffin for socialist ideologies should be their incessant crimes against humanity. These range from societal oppression, torture and imprisonment to mass murder on an industrial scale. This is on top of the fact that the age of governmental experimentation have demonstrated the overwhelming superiority of a constitutionally limited representative republic model. Not to mention the plain fact that the socialist ideologies simply do not work in the real world.
One of the Left’s most common excuses in defense of socialism is that ‘It wasn’t done correctly’ or some variation thereof. The problem with these tiresome and overly repetitive excuses is that the collectivist ideologies are all based on the same basic principles, as they yield the same horrific outcome every time they are tried. After centuries of the same failure and the same oppression ridden results, it is safe to say that these experiments will always end up the same,  no matter how the Left tries to play with the meaning of words, 75 Ways Socialism Has Improved America over and under defining their base ideology.
The final case for the abolition of the socialist ideologies will begin with it’s mildest forms of oppression and ending up with it’s most brutal. This also just happens to coincide with the usual timeline of how these con games are usually perpetrated.

Deception.

For the most part, deception is part and parcel to the socialist ideologies. This goes back to their basic principles of subjugation of the individual by force. The brutal reality of these ideologies is hardly amenable to acceptance by people, so as a matter of course socialist ideologues have elevated lying and deceit to an art form. Their deceptions begin with all manner of labeling lies – their being “Liberal” or “Progressive” to playing games with the names of their legislative program (e.g. “Affordable Care Act”) to the very colours used to describe their side of the political spectrum.

Denigration of Liberty.

Many have taken notice of a distinct feature of the Socialist-Left, that of wanting to have tight control over people. This was exemplified in the previous previously referenced piece on Mayor Bill de Blasio. In the past, it has kept a lid on it’s totalitarian tendencies, but as of late, they have really come out of the authoritarian closet.   Time was they just had their gun control hobby horse, but this has expanded to wanting to clamp down on free-speech by the expedient of “Hate Speech”  to wanting to have any form of religion [with one notable exception] banished from the public sphere.

People (Gun) Control.

As mentioned, this has always been an obsession with those of the socialist ideologies, since one cannot subjugate a population without a monopoly on the use of force. Socialists , Communists, Maoists and Fascists of the storied past of the Left have all taken the step of disarming the people, before it becomes necessary to oppress them. It never works out too well to have Chekists or Gestapo break down someone’s door at 3:00 AM and be on the receiving end of a blast of friendly gunfire. Better to have people acquiesce to registering and then having their guns confiscated before the real oppression can commence in earnest.

Censorship and tight state control of the media.

Those of the control obsessed socialist ideologies also need to keep a tight lid of information and free-speech. One cannot pull a con game on an entire population if people can start to question the veracity of all the lofty promises of free stuff. Cults often use the same indoctrination tactics, bombarding people day and night with the same simplistic and false messaging, keeping them in an echo chamber where contravening facts can’t get in the way. An essential part of this propagandization involves the denigration of alternate information sources to keep the victim suspicious of anything that contradicts what they are being repetitively taught.

Tight Societal Control.

The erasure of privacy and personal lives in favour of collectivist mentality is part and parcel of the indoctrination process. One is no longer supposed to focus on themselves, but on the ‘greater good’ of the collective. A tight surveillance state is also essential in these matters with the carrot of convenience hiding the stick of government control as in the case of Communist China as detailed in the Washington Post.

Secret Police Apparatus.

In the book “The Bridge at Andau” , James A. Michener had an extensive discussion on the AVO – the Hungarian version of the typical secret state security apparatus. These are all too commonplace amongst the collectivist regimes. While the Cheka, Stasi and Gestapo were infamous in their brutality, the history of the socialist ideologies are replete with these organisations with many still continuing the ‘traditions’ of torture and imprisonment: Asphyxia and Drills: How Political Prisoners in Venezuela Get Tortured, Venezuelan Regime Steps up Torture against Protesters, Forces Them to Eat Excrement.
It also follows that subjugation by force require a vast system of facilities to imprison, torture and murder those that disagree with it’s “Democratic” process. In the ‘Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik’ this immense network was termed by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as The Gulag Archipelago, the ‘Nationalsozialistische deutsche Arbeiter-Partei’ regime had it’s system of concentration camps and ‘Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela’ has it’s ‘La Tumba’,  amongst other prisons to give just a few examples.

Mass Murder on an Industrial Scale.

This of course was the end of the line in the range of barbaric realities of the socialism. What begins with brainwashing and absence of liberty finishes up with unmerciful torture and death. Even this portion of the collectivist oppression realm has it’s horrific ‘innovations’ unmatched in modern times. Socialists know from their cold, calculating thoughts that there will be those who refuse to be “Re-educated” and become model comrades of a glorious collectivist society. They know that some will have to be sacrificed for the ‘common good’, but they are perfectly willing to “Break a few eggs to make an omelet”. No one has an exact read on the death toll of the Socialist ideologies, but there have been attempts to make these estimates in: The Black Book of Communism

The Final Word.

This long list of crimes against humanity perpetrated by the socialist ideologies is a multi-count indictment against their continuation as viable government forms. The original inspiration for it were the absurd calls by the Left for the elimination of economic liberty. It should be clear that the case for the opposite has been made. The socialist ideologies do not work and they are woefully inferior to Limited government representative republics that protect property and the rights of the individual. Lastly, the incomprehensible crimes against humanity perpetrated by the socialist ideologies should seal their fate as to what should be done with them. Those vile, immoral, parasitic and downright evil ideologies should never have been tried in the first place and never tried again.

 Originally published on the NOQ Report