Socialism vs Capitalism

Socialism Vs Capitalism

This Hub is the last of six in a series. Previous entries include: Define Socialism; Pros and Cons of Capitalism; Experiments in Socialism; and Socialism in America.

All nations that have fully implemented Socialism have experienced a drastic drop in their standard of living, marked by both a lack of goods and food. Each has seen the loss of civil rights, liberty, and freedom. All have witnessed the emergence of a savior figure. The people starve to death.

Socialism promises freedom and prosperity, but it delivers bondage and misery. Socialism means slavery; it assumes management of the lives of people; it accepts nothing less than complete control. Its conscious aim is to regulate the day-to-day affairs of a community. The very men who are most anxious to plan society, are also the most dangerous, as they are most intolerant of the plans of others. From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.

Socialism is a deliberate organization of the labors of society to achieve social goals. It wants to organize the whole of society and all its resources, and refuses to recognize autonomy of individuals. This is totalitarianism de facto.

A Socialist government must not allow itself to be fettered by democratic procedure. On the contrary, it must take vast powers to legislate its ideals by ordinance and decree. As Karl Mannheim wrote, “In a planned society more and more spheres of social life, and ultimately each and all of them, are subjected to state control.”

Central Planning

It is not so hard to plan the economic life of a family, and it is easy enough for a small community. As the size of the community to be planned increases, agreement as to desired ends decreases, and the necessity to use compulsion and force grows. In a small community, there is not much disparity among views as to what tasks are important and what standards are valued.

The wider the net is thrown, the less people agree, and with less agreement on values and ends, coercion and force will be used by those in power. This is the reason America was supposed to have strong rights for individual states, and local control over schools and municipal concerns—away from the long arm of the central government.

It is well known that when small communities were in charge of their own affairs, there was no lack of people willing to help others. When asked to help people whose habits of life and ways of thinking are similar to our own, most people are willing to sacrifice.

When government takes control over the economy, it takes control of the means that determine our ends. The government then decides whose ends are to be served, which values are rated high or rated low—what men should believe in and strive for.

Socialism is not a good idea gone bad but a bad idea

Under Socialism, the government decides what commodities and services shall be available and in what quantities, as well as directs their distribution among regions and groups. From there it can determine where people will live, whom they will live with, and where they will work. The loss of freedom I am describing here leads to hopelessness as people eventually come to realize they have no way to improve their lot in life except by government fiat.

Of all the Socialists who have come to power worldwide by decrying poverty, not one of them has ever increased productivity or abolished poverty—or even reduced poverty. This has caused a shift in strategy among Socialists from declaring that if only they were in charge there would be plenty to go around, to declaring if they were in charge everybody would have a more just piece of the pie, an equitable distribution of wealth. But any such plan must in reality also decide who gets what.

Political freedom is meaningless without economic freedom. Economic freedom is the foundation of all freedoms. Socialism promises freedom from want, but this can only be achieved by relieving the individual of the power—and necessity—of choice. The right of choice carries with it risk and responsibility.

It is rare to find strength of character among those not confident that they will make their own way in the world by their own efforts.

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Socialism is not a good idea that went bad. It is a bad idea. It fails everywhere it is tried. Even countries such as China that hang on to the vestiges of Socialism have imported measures of Capitalism to progress economically.

Socialism has caused enormous human suffering

Poland’s Solidarity Movement; Pope John Paul II; and the American president reviled by Socialists, Ronald Reagan, brought down the Iron Curtain erected by Socialists to enslave hundreds of millions of human beings. It should be obvious that a defining feature of Socialist governments is walls to keep people in—as opposed to the usual purpose of walls: to keep people out.

Socialism is a faulty philosophy based on unrealistic psychology. Human nature is not so easily refashioned. Private property is a permanent feature of human life and always has been, at least since farming began. Violence is the only way to enforce Socialism on people. Socialism must have unlimited state authority in order to make people give up their possessions and give up their private interests.

Socialism has caused enormous human suffering, and it always destroys that which it purports to be about: equality. The bureaucracy required to centrally plan and administer a Socialist State grabs power and will do anything to keep it, including mass murder. The enforcement of the equality of possessions leads to inequality of rights.

Collectivization

The collectivization of productive assets leads to their management by bureaucrats who are incompetent and unmotivated. Productivity always declines; technological innovation wanes; incentive is usually non-existent; working hard is often punished. Socialism turns every citizen into an employee of the state—dependent on the state for his or her very survival.

Property rights are the most effective control of state power; the recognition of the right of individuals to their belongings implicitly acknowledges that state power has limits. The goal of Socialism—the abolition of private property—leads to the loss of liberty. Socialism does not free men from exploitation as Marx said. Socialism is a form of slavery.

Utopias of Socialism cost 100 million people their lives in the 20^th Century. Some Socialists simply shrug their shoulders and say you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Human beings are not eggs, and no omelette has emerged from the slaughter. The best people of these societies are the ones who were killed off. The populations were robbed of self-reliance, and the ability to make decisions (while awaiting orders). The work ethic and sense of responsibility goes away.

Capitalism has proven it can adjust to any crisis. Capitalism encourages criticism. The emergence of Capitalism caused the emergence of Democracy. Capitalism is about self-discipline and individual responsibility.

Why would bureaucrats be better than managers?

Socialism is the organization of society in which the decisions about how and what is produced, and who is to get what, are made by public authority instead of private companies and individuals. In America, people’s economic affairs are migrating from the private to the public sphere.

Huge bureaucracies, sometimes outside even the control of democracy or politics, interfere with the processes of production and distribution. Private industry and trade are slowly being conquered by the state, leading to Socialism. But it isn’t called that dirty word in America. They now call it Liberalism.

The success of the business class in developing the productive powers of the United States and the incredible standard of living for all Americans—even the poor would not be considered poor in most of the world—has somehow undermined the very Capitalism that made it all possible.

American business was instrumental in the creation of the political system and intellectual class. Capitalism has been denigrated and watered down in the name of regulation and equality. Social Liberals desire greater equality in incomes, rarely defining how far down the road to absolute equality they are willing to travel.

Many Americans bewail the salaries of Fortune 500 CEOs, but they think nothing of the even higher salaries earned by celebrities, athletes, and entertainers. Redistributive taxation is the weapon of equalization. Public control over labor and the money market are means to achieve their ends. Overregulation ignores the vast productive possibilities of Capitalism to lift all boats to a higher standard of living.

Socialists want to rule the world

The idea of a one-world government—as a way to lasting peace—is viewed by some as the next great advance of civilization. But in the world today, wealthy and powerful nations are the object of envy and hatred from poor nations. An international government of Socialism would feel it had a duty to redistribute the world’s wealth from those who have earned it to those who have not, in the name of Class Warfare and Social Justice. They would want to equalize living standards around the world according to a master plan.

This cannot be accomplished without massive violence—and a relative reduction of the aggregate living standards for the population of the world. We cannot prevent the abuse of power unless we limit power, even power proposed to be used for righteous ideals.

Socialists want a global government. It will mean that non-Americans will determine the economy of America. Few Americans are prepared to submit to international authority. To central plan the whole world’s affairs will be impossible. But that won’t keep Socialists from trying. The imposition of the will of a few upon the whole world, especially regarding the distribution of wealth, will require brute force of a magnitude never before seen.

In response to this, American Socialists like to claim that the people of Germany, Russia, China, and Cambodia were especially wicked. Each of these countries was ruled and brutalized by a small band of Socialists, who failed to perceive their actions as evil—they simply did what was necessary to achieve their goals. The nature of their task—to control the economic and social life of people with divergent ideals and values—made their murderous actions inevitable. Their intentions could only be realized through brute force that the recipients surely found highly immoral.

Freedom

Surely, we have an obligation to assist the poor of the world to raise their standards of living through their own efforts. The world can contribute to these efforts by encouraging the Rule of Law, property rights, general order, freedom, liberty, Democracy, and Capitalism.

There is more beauty and decency found among free people, who are naturally more happy and content without the deadly blight of centralization. The key to freedom is Democracy, where men can understand and participate in decision-making; not Socialism with all of the important decisions made by an organization far removed from the common man. Democracy only works with a great measure of local self-government, which provides a school of political training for the people at large as well as their future leaders.

It is only where responsibility can be learned and practiced in affairs with which most people are familiar, where it is the awareness of one’s neighbor rather than some theoretical knowledge of the needs of other people which guides action, that the ordinary man can take a real part in public affairs because they concern the world he knows. Where the scope of political measures becomes so large that the bureaucracy almost exclusively possesses the necessary knowledge, the creative impulses of the private person must flag.

This article was not written for any personal gain but only to explain the difference in the ultimate result for my heirs and those of my fellow citizens. A true explanation of what Socialism is creates hysterical reactions, generally malicious and disingenuous, among its true believers.

Books have been written to make these explanations far better than I that were rejected by publishers not because the book would not have been successful, but because the publisher deemed it “unfit for publication” due to their own prejudices. This type of subtle censorship is typical of Socialists.

SOURCES

My research sources for this article are Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter; The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek; and Communism by Richard Pipes.

Comments

James A Watkins (author) from Chicago on November 16, 2017:

Buildreps ~ Thank you for taking the time to read my article. I appreciate your astute observations and you ask a great question. Socialism is being indoctrinated into our youth through Government Schools. Just the other day, a new survey found that Millennials favor Socialism over Capitalism - by a slim margin but disturbing nonetheless.

Buildreps from Europe on June 12, 2015:

Interesting well crafted Hub about capitalism, James. You're absolutely right in the point that communism hopelessly failed. The result: ex-communists became one the most blatant capitalists alive today. Ever been in Kiev or Moscow? You won't see more Ferrari, Porsche, Bugatti dealers than there. Communism is clearly wiped out, no doubt about it.

What I don't understand, and that fascinates me, what is your motivation to write this Hub? What made you decide to promote capitalism 25 years after the collapse of the USSR?

James A Watkins (author) from Chicago on June 12, 2015:

Wayne Brown--- You are so right in everything you wrote, my friend. Your commentary here is truly extraordinary. If I may quote you: "If you support what is going on in this nation today, you will be very surprised when the culmination of that effort is reached to find that there is not a place for you at the Utopian table but only a shelter from the rain with the millions upon millions of poverty-stricken people who have been stripped of all freedom and opportunity as these madmen take over the world. Nations are no longer brought down by military assault--they are destroyed by poisoning the minds of those who inhabit it." Awesome!

James A Watkins (author) from Chicago on June 12, 2015:

Vladimir Uhri---I know you have gone to heaven now. I miss our interactions, my friend. You were a great and needful witness as to the true evils of socialism, since you escaped from behind the Iron Curtain. None of these American armchair political commentators have ever experienced the harsh and severe life under the slavery of socialism. One of my jobs is to try to prevent them from ever having to suffer so. It is a tough task because they are indoctrinated from Kindergarten all the sway through postgraduate studies that socialism is great.

Wayne Brown from Texas on May 08, 2015:

One of the biggest factors standing between a new world order--essentially a global government and economy, is the middle-class or middle income wage earner in the USA. That sector is the backbone of America; the home of patriotism and the resistance to stand-off the onslaught of socialism and eventual communism. The agenda in the USA today (seemingly supported heavily on both sides of the aisle) is to break the backs of that portion of the American population while promising the rest a Utopia existence. Ironically, the process is carried out under the guise of "saving the Middle-Class" but the true goal is just the opposite. Once that effort is successful and that sector joins the poverty ranks, the move to globalize will pick up steam rapidly. The quickest way to break the spirit of that sector of the American population is to drive them into poverty in a manner which makes them believed that they failed and require the government to assist them. That step becomes a function of loading the national debt and ultimately devaluing the buying power of their earning, yoking them with ObamaCare which quickly eats up their earnings, and saddling them with a litany of welfare programs all justified by the guilt of human compassion and entered into without regard for the fiscal health of the nation. You are either on one side of that fence or the other. If you support what is going on in this nation today, you will be very surprised when the culmination of that effort is reached to find that there is not a place for you at the Utopian table but only a shelter from the rain with the millions upon millions of poverty-stricken people who have been stripped of all freedom and opportunity as these madmen take over the world. Nations are no longer brought down by military assault--they are destroyed by poisoning the minds of those who inhabit it.

vladimir uhri on March 02, 2013:

all this propergander from america so all the news we see about tent citys

in the usa are lies ,there was this woman jackie in a tent outside michigan

a so called middle class lab tecnician who lost her job ended up living in a tent 58 years of age free market captilism is still not the answer it never will be paul baker winsford cheshire

James A Watkins (author) from Chicago on February 13, 2013:

paul baker uk--- Thank you!! Thank you very much! :D

paul baker uk on February 06, 2013:

the new deal prolonged it who are you going to blame next ROCKERFELLA THIS IS THE WORST ONE YET PULL THE OTHER ONE.

James A Watkins (author) from Chicago on February 04, 2013:

Vladimir Uhri--- You are so right, my brother. Who better than you, who have actually lived behind the Iron Curtain, can tell us the horror of it in real life--not in theory or out of some book or utopian website.

Thank you my friend! And may God Bless You richly!

Brother James

Vladimir Uhri from HubPages, FB on February 01, 2013:

Paul, Socialism is STATE socialistic capitalism. It is system without competition, state monopoly so to speak. The word Capitalism I used is not correct, since free Capitalism is good.

James A Watkins (author) from Chicago on January 31, 2013:

PAUL BAKER UK--- The Great Depression of the 1930s was engineered on purpose by the Big Bankers of the Federal Reserve in order that Americans would get into such desperate straits that they would surrender their freedom and accept socialism in the form of a leviathan state.

The New Deal did nothing to end the Depression but prolonged it.

I agree with you about Weimar Germany.

Thank you very much for reading my work. I appreciate your remarks.

james

PAUL BAKER UK on January 26, 2013:

THE WALL ST CRASH OF 1929 WAS ONE BIG GAME OF MONOPOLY THAT WENT BADLY WRONG DUE TO THE LOVE OF MONEY I SUPPOSE YOU BLAME SOCIALISM FOR THAT.

DID NOT PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S, NEW DEAL INVOLVE STATE RUN PROGRAMS TO TACKLE UNEMPLOYMENT AND POVERTY. THE HYPER INFLATION IN GERMANY WERE IT TOOK A BAG FULL OF MONEY TO BY A LOAF OF BREAD NO WONDER HITLER CAME TO POWER.

James A Watkins (author) from Chicago on January 09, 2013:

paul baker— Somehow your comments ended up in my spam folder. I didn't do it. It must have been some kind of glitch with HubPages.

Free enterprise is all that has ever created mass prosperity in human history. We would be foolish to throw that away from some utopian dream based on a faulty understanding of human nature, the world, and reality.

paul baker on January 07, 2013:

lets make a better world with the zeitgeist movement this captilist and

socailist is no good this shit as got to got to go

paul baker on January 07, 2013:

come james this shit to stop zeitgeisht movemovement is only way forward captilism and soclaism are flawd lets make a better world

James A Watkins (author) from Chicago on January 07, 2013:

paul baker winsford— I certainly agree with your quote from 1 Timothy. The key word there, my friend, is love. God never says you must hate money itself or that money is evil. Jesus paid the two drachma tax. But to LOVE money is to put money above God. And this you must never do. We musn't worship money—or any other created thing—instead of the Creator.

God does not hate bankers. God hates what some bankers do. It is possible to be a banker and a Godly person. All you have to do is think right and act right.

Thank you for coming back with both of your additional comments.

paul baker on December 30, 2012:

MAX KEISER GOD HATES BANKERS

paul baker winsford on December 30, 2012:

First Epistle to Timothy New Testament ( 1 Timothy 6: 10

Love of money is the root of all evil.

I go along with that quote from the bible and i am an ATHEIST.

James A Watkins (author) from Chicago on December 29, 2012:

PAUL BAKER WINSFORD UK— I appreciate your additional comments. I did read up on the Zeitgeist Movement just now. I have heard of it and the film about it.

This is a Movement that "advocates the abolition of money and private property and promotes a global socioeconomic system in which all resources would be equally shared. . . . a system in which the Earth's resources are equally shared by its inhabitants in a moneyless and stateless system where debt, credit, exchange, barter, wage labor, private property and the profit motive would be eliminated."

Getting rid of money is the dream of those who want world domination; those who work for Satan, some of whom know it but most of whom don't; the dream of the godless, the anti-Christ, and the global communists, because without money someone will take control of the world who will demand you take the Mark of the Beast—the RFID chip if you will—to be able to get food, shelter, clothes, medicine, health care, etc.

Your Movement wants total anarchy, with no government at all. Fine. Who is going to protect the weak against the strong? The women and children from being gang raped?

You want to share all the resources of the world with everyone equally? That is the dream of a kindergartener. How are food and all other goods going to get from one place to another? Who is going to be in charge of distribution of goods and services? Who is going maintain roads, the internet, libraries, clean water supply and sewage disposal, as well as stop piracy on the open seas?

Who will bother to work with nothing to gain? After all if I work for six months growing beans they are not MY beans. Why do it? Are you going to force people to work? That is what all utopias get around to eventually.

People against private property are against God for He Himself said "Do not steal" which certainly implies one must have something that belongs to one before it could possibly be stolen. So I cannot even "own" by shoes? Anyone can take them away from me at any time if they are man enough? This is Darwin's ideas writ large.

Money serves quite a useful purpose. It is a form of barter—that is why it was invented. If I grow corn in your new utopia and you make shoes, and we both want some of what the other has, money fills the gap when, as in most transactions, what each of us wants from the other is not equal. You may want 10 bushels of corn but I only want one pair of shoes. You give me money for the difference. Everybody wins. That is why money has proved so popular and long-lasting. Oh wait . . . under your system the corn I grow won't be mine and the shoes you make won't be yours since private property has been abolished. So you will make shoes and if I want a pair I will just take them.

Your movement asserts the ridiculous notion that "there was no real historical figure Jesus and that he was invented by early Christians." That idea is a product of Satan. If you believe that whopper you are on the road to perdition, my friend.

In regard to the Zeitgesit Movement, one article notes that "Karl Marx set the stage for the official denial of Jesus within communism. That is why Marxist–Leninist atheism became part of the state ideals in communist Russia in 1922. The communist state not only supported the Christ myth theory but embellished it with scientific colloquialisms, and school textbooks began to teach that Jesus never existed, making Russia a bastion of Jesus denial."

Lenin and Stalin and Hitler and Mao. These are your bedfellows. All mass murderers.

I do agree with your Movement that "the Federal Income Tax is illegal." And I believe in "the existence of a secret agreement to merge the United States, Canada and Mexico into a "North American Union". The creation of this North American Union is then alleged to be a step towards the creation of "One World Government." I agree that "under such a government every human could be implanted with an RFID chip to monitor individuals and suppress dissent."

So there. We found some common ground. :D

James

ps The Profit Motive has lifted the standard of living of the human race more than any other single thing. Check it out. Think about it. Even Marx did not deny that.

PAUL BAKER WINSFORD UK on December 26, 2012:

LOOK UP THE ZEITGEIST MOVEMENT THEY ARE WELL CLUED

UP IT'S NOT REARLY ABOUT SOCIALISM OR CAPITALISM IT IS WHAT TO REPLACE

IT WITH. I JOINED THE ON MONDAY

James A Watkins (author) from Chicago on December 20, 2012:

THANK you for coming back by with your excellent comments. Yes, there is relative poverty in the Appalachian Mountain regions. Relative to those living in Manhattan, yes, they are poor. Relative to the one million souls living in cardboard boxes on the sidewalks of Calcutta hoping to catch a rat for dinner, no, they are not poor.

I know about this region because my family comes from there. My mother grew up in a house with a dirt floor. My dad's family lived in a house where snow fell on you in bed, where you slept 3 to a bed, huddled together for warmth as there was no heat and it was zero degrees outside sometimes, through huge holes in the roof and he had nine brothers and sisters, all of whom had to work picking fruit in the fields from the time they were little but big enough to do it. All of them became middle class or upper class people through their own efforts. None EVER took any government help. All ended up wealthy by world standards. Only in America, a country based on economic freedom, is this possible. In most places, being born dirt poor means you will stay that way. In socialist countries such as North Korea, EVERYBODY lives more poorly than Americans in the Appalachians today.

paul baker uk on December 15, 2012:

poverty in the USA it is terrible in the APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS with no running water or electricity, they live in squalid conditions

Those people could do with some SOCIALIST HELP

ONLINE poverty in the Appalachian Mountains.

James A Watkins (author) from Chicago on November 16, 2012:

Paul Baker— Thank you very much, Paul, for the 3 sets of fine comments you posted here on my Hub the other day. I would like to enter a gentle correction to some of your assertions, kind sir. And that is this:

In 2007, Margaret Thatcher became the first living former Prime Minister to be honored with a statue in Parliament. And with good reason. The total personal wealth of British subjects increased 80 percent during her leadership. She slashed inflation from 22 percent to 4 percent. The British People all benefitted from lower prices and increased efficiency from privatized industries. Home ownership increased 65 percent. Unemployment fell drastically. The economy grew strong and stable.