The Industrial Revolution and Socialism

Climate Change activists date the current warming trend to the onset of the Industrial Revolution. It seems obvious to me that their alarmism about Climate has more to do with an animus against the Industrial Revolution and its effects than concern for the environment. Capitalism and free enterprise are associated with the Industrial Revolution. A recent study showed that today 50% of college students consider themselves to be Socialists. The percentage of their professors must be even higher. 

Over fifty years ago when I taught a unit on the Industrial Revolution as part of a basic course in Western Civilization, I thought then and still believe today that the Industrial Revolution was one of the most significant developments in the history of the world. If you do an image search for Industrial Revolution, you will see countless images of smoke-belching factories of 150 years ago, but you will not see an image of the ubiquitous latest mobile phone pictured above. Before the Industrial Revolution life was indeed "nasty, brutish, and short."

Try to imagine a world today without the following:

Electricity

Clean water delivered by pipeline to your home

Modern sewers and waste removal systems

Automobiles

Home heating without firewood

Computers

Televisions

Air Conditioning in homes and cars

Trains, Planes, and Buses

Indoor Plumbing—before the IR there was no such thing.

Elevators

Washing Machines for clothes and dishes

Hospitals with their incredible technology

Cell Phones—most important of all!

It is hard to believe but our ancestors before the Industrial Revolution had none of these essential elements of modern life. Actually, many parts of the world today still live in the pre-industrial age without many of the items listed above. 

Industrial Revolution is the term given to the transformation of manufacturing from homes and shops to factories employing hundreds or even thousands. The transformation began in Great Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and eventually spread all over the world. However, before there could be an industrial revolution, there had to be three other revolutionary developments. 

First, there was a Demographic Revolution involving a substantial increase in population. This increase happened not so much because of a rise in the birth rate but because of a decline in the death or mortality rate due to a dramatic drop in infant mortality, a drop caused by advances in diet and sanitation. For example, in Italy in 1860, 232 of every 1000 infants died in the first two years of life but 60 years later only 127 of 1000 infants died during the same period. 

An Agricultural Revolution accompanied the Demographic Revolution. Human ingenuity devised new methods of farming, land management, and animal husbandry to feed the growing population. While doomsayers like the British clergyman Thomas Malthus were predicting mass starvation, they could not predict that the profit motive and human resourcefulness would provide for the needs of an ever increasing population. 

A Transportation Revolution also accompanied the Industrial Revolution. The nineteenth century was the great age of canal and railroad building. At the same time, steam power replaced wind power as a safer and more reliable source of energy. The revolution in means of transportation allowed mass migrations of people from rural areas to the urban centers of manufacturing and commerce. It also allowed goods and services to be delivered faster and at less cost. Lower costs meant that not only rich people could afford them.

From the beginning the tremendous social, economic, and political changes caused by these revolutions had both good and bad consequences. Rural areas lost population and industrial cities became overcrowded. Writers and social commentators were quick to point out the terrible working conditions in the factories, and the deplorable living conditions in the slums surrounding the factories. 

Moreover, critics objected, as they do today, to the incredible disparities in wealth and income between the factory owners and financiers (capitalists) who profited and the workers who toiled. The misery of the urban poor could not be overlooked. Nevertheless, in countries that did not industrialize, like Ireland or southern Italy, the poor were even worse off and literally starved to death either from actual food shortages or malnutrition. Why else would millions from Ireland and Italy leave their beautiful countries to live in the overcrowded cities of the New World?

I suspect that the Industrial Revolution still has a bad name today. Capitalist is a term of opprobrium and even capitalists shun to describe themselves as such. Even union members whose pensions are invested throughout the American industrial sector do not realize that they are capitalists. Of course, Progressives are outspoken in decrying the terrible effects of corporate greed and inequality.

It’s true that few of us will have the income or assets of CEOs, politicians, Rock stars, TV personalities, or professional athletes. But more than anywhere else in the world, we do have the opportunity to acquire and keep property. We can even buy and sell shares in the companies we work for. You may call it Capitalism but I prefer to call it a free-enterprise system. Whatever you call it, it has worked to raise the standard of living in this country to the highest level that has ever been seen in the world. 

Students today are asked to evaluate the relative merits of Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism. All three systems were responses to the Industrial Revolution. You can judge for yourself which of the three systems did the best job of providing the necessities of life listed at the beginning of this essay. Why are people still fleeing today from Socialist "paradises" like Cuba, Nicuagua, and Venezuela? 

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Cultural Inoculation

 

One of the results of the Covid pandemic is that by now practically everyone has some knowledge of how the human immune system works to attack and destroy foreign invaders into our bodies. The microscopic warfare is almost immediate, and by now we are all familiar with the symptoms. 

A few months ago an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal indicated that we also have a political or cultural immune system that works to repel foreign ideas. A lawyer with a 44 year career with a prestigious law firm attended a conference call called by the firm to discuss the implications of the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. When she dared to assert that many legal scholars agreed with the Court that abortion should be left to the States, the response of her colleagues was immediate and visceral. Some even claimed that they could not breathe.

Many recent reports indicate that this visceral reaction to unwelcome ideas is prevalent today throughout our country, and most especially on college campuses where unwelcome speakers are harassed or shouted down before they can utter a word.  It is obvious that most of the protestors are very left of center. They call themselves Progressives but they are actually Regressives harking back to the days of Socialism and Communism.  

For most people Socialism is a political and economic system but it is also, and always has been, a cultural phenomenon. Years ago I read practically all the novels and historical works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian author of the twentieth century, whose writings contributed enormously to the downfall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). 

More recently, I found a tattered copy of Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward at a library sale. It is a novel about the inmates and staff of a cancer facility in the Soviet Union of 1954. It is semi-auto biographical since the author himself had been treated for cancer after years in USSR prison camps. The story of the novel grips the reader from the start but it also turns a spotlight on the cultural revolution that resulted from the triumph of Socialism after the Revolution of 1917.* 

One of the patients in the ward is Dyoma, a young man who is suffering from a deadly tumor in his leg. Here is Solzhenitsyn’s account of a significant aspect of Dyoma’s early education. 

Ever since he had been in the first class, before he could read or write, Dyoma had been taught, knew for certain and fully understood that religion is a drug, a three-times reactionary dogma, of benefit only to swindlers. Because of it the working people in some places had been unable to free themselves from exploitation. But as soon as they got rid of religion they would take up arms and free themselves. And Aunt Styofa with her funny calendar, with the word ‘God’ always on her lips, with her carefree smile even in the gloomy clinic, and her pasty, was obviously a thoroughly reactionary figure. (138)

The fruits of this cultural revolution could be seen in 1954 in the plight of young Russian women like the attractive nurse Zoya in a world without religion.

Did this mean that marriage was the only alternative, that that was where happiness lay? The young men she met all danced and went for walks with the same aim in mind: to warm themselves up a bit, have their fun and then clear out. They used to say among themselves, ‘I could get married, but it never takes me more than an evening or two to find a new “friend”, so why should I bother?’ 

Indeed, why marry when women were so easy to get? If a great load of tomatoes suddenly arrived in the market, you couldn’t just triple the price of yours, they’d go rotten. How could you be inaccessible when everyone around you was ready to surrender?

A registry office wedding didn’t help either. Zoya had learnt this from the experience of Maria, a Ukrainian nurse she did alternate shifts with. Maria had relied on the registry office, but a week after the marriage her husband left her, went away and completely disappeared. For seven years, she brought up her child on her own, and on top of it all, she was trapped by her marriage. (172)

Solzhenitsyn wrote Cancer Ward almost seventy years ago but the fruits of the Socialist cultural revolution are very evident today in the massive problem that Russia has with orphans or just plain unwanted children. 

A couple of years ago former President Trump vowed that America would never be a Socialist country, but there is no doubt that the Socialist cultural revolution has already come. Its tenets have been taught in American schools for years, and the results are more and more obvious. 

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*Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Cancer Ward, 1968. Penguin book edition 1971.

Income Inequality: 1950-2022

                                           

William F. Buckley, Jr.

Last year marked the seventieth anniversary of the publication of William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale, a book which some believe to have launched the conservative movement in America. Below find a brief review. 

*********

 William F. Buckley Jr., the famed Conservative commentator, first came to nation’s attention with the publication of God and Man at Yale back in 1951. The book, a review of Buckley's years at Yale was subtitled, “The Superstitions of ‘Academic Freedom’”. 

Buckley must have had an outstanding college career before graduating in 1950. For example, one year he held the prestigious position of editor of the Yale Daily News.  He  loved his Alma Mater but found some disturbing trends. 

Here I would just like to concentrate on his lengthy chapter devoted to the teaching of economics at Yale, a chapter primarily analyzing the textbooks chosen for the basic introductory course that was taken by a large number of students. All four of the textbooks believed that the biggest problem facing America in 1950 was “income inequality”. That’s right! Income Inequality or, as he titled it, THE UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME. Why was income inequality such a big issue back in 1950?

I believe the answer can be found in the background of the economists who had written the textbooks. If Buckley was about 25 in 1950, then I would guess the authors of the textbooks were born before the First World War and grew up in the era marked by the subsequent Communist Revolution in Russia and the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s. Paul Samuelson, for example, was born in 1915 and his textbook, Economics, an Introductory Analysis, was first published in 1948 and soon became one of the best-selling textbooks of all time. Samuelson’s book was one of the four reviewed by Buckley.

Samuelson and the others all believed that the experiment begun in Russia in 1917 was the wave of the future, and that the Great Depression in American had shown the inadequacies of the traditional system of free or private enterprise in dealing with modern economic issues. In the chapter on economics Buckley cited a comparison between the Soviet and American systems from one of these textbooks. The italics are Buckley’s.

compare “ the situation in our economy with that in a socialist economy, such as the Russian or Czechoslovakian. In the Russian economy the decision to produce, let us say 20 million tons of pig iron, is made by the Central Planning board, which presumably takes into account the needs and resources of the Russian economy before it comes to a decision. The same board determines how many automobiles to produce, how many pairs of socks to manufacture, and how many acres to put into wheat. In our economy, no such institution exists. No one group or person determines how much steel to produce, how many tractors to make, or how much land to plant in cotton…. In a socialist economy, important questions of output, price, employment, and so on are planned collectively. In a capitalistic economy, these decisions are made separately by individual firms…. How does the business firm determine how much it will produce? The answer to this question is to be found in the fact that the business firm in this country is privately owned…. The determination of how much to produce, or of the price to be charged for the product, is made with one interest in mind—that of the owner. The owner’s interest is to secure as large a profit as possible. [Pp. 65-66]

Just as today, it was believed that the profit motive that was the root of all evil. In the words of one text, “the state, being free from the profit motive and having the power of compulsion, is able to make its revenue fit its expenditures (within limits) rather than the reverse.” [p. 67] Of course, profit motive brings up the image of the greedy businessman as often portrayed in popular movies of the 1930s or in the figure of Mr. Monopoly from the very popular board game.

Samuelson’s text disclaimed the image but still used it.

In this connection, it is important to understand just what a monopolist is. He is not indeed,“…a fat, greedy man with a big moustache and cigar who goes around violating the law. If he were, we could put him in jail. He is anyone important enough to affect the prices of the things that he sells and buys. To some degree that means almost every businessman”… [75]

In 1950 all four textbook authors were convinced that the experiment going on in Russia was the wave of the future and that the private enterprises system was a thing of the past that had been forever discredited by the Great Depression. The textbooks, and the professors who chose them, were all advocates of central planning, a large central government, extremely high progressive income tax rates, and confiscatory inheritance tax rates. 

Writing in 1950 I don’t suppose that the young Buckley or the textbook authors could have foreseen the great economic boom that would take place in the USA in the next few decades, a boom that not only raised millions out of poverty, but also created the wealthiest country in the history of the world. Neither could they imagine that during the same period the Soviet economy would finally be exposed as a rotten failure. At the same time as we were beginning to learn about Stalin’s brutal oppression, we were learning of people lining up at Russian markets for hours to buy inferior or even non-existent necessities. 

The Soviet Union had eliminated income inequality by making everyone poor. Years later, we would learn that they had actually created a new aristocracy of Communist party members and their friends who lorded it over their subjects. As in most socialist countries members of the ruling party made up only about 10% of the population. So much for central planning and the elimination of the profit motive.

In one of history’s ironies Paul Samuelson made a fortune with his economics textbook, In true capitalist fashion he contrived to bring out a new edition every couple of years so that students could not buy older used texts. No central board or agency prevented him or his publisher from printing and selling as many copies as the market would bear. He lived a long life and received practically every award a scholar could get. In 1996, he was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Bill Clinton, another Yale graduate who now makes millions by giving speeches to fat cats all over the world while he, his wife, and "democratic socialists" or so-called progressives complain of income inequality.

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Socialist Ideals and Reality

Senator Sanders: Democratic Socialist

The Socialist ideas of Senator Bernie Sanders have been tested in many laboratories of human experience over the past one hundred years. We have the example of Socialism in Russia that began with the Communist revolution in 1917. We have the example of National Socialism (Nazism) in Germany that led to World War II and the Holocaust. We have the example of Maoism in China during the great purge that murdered over 20 Million people. We have the example of the various Socialist “republics” set up in Eastern Europe after World War II. Practically on our doorstep is the example of Cuba, a model for Sanders, under the dictatorial regime of the Castro brothers.

All of these Socialist experiments began with high-sounding ideals and slogans but all degenerated into police states ruled by a small minority of party bigwigs and their bureaucratic servants. I was reminded of this the other day while viewing a truly great German film, “The Lives of Others.” 

Before the collapse of the Berlin wall, East Germany’s population was closely monitored by the State Secret Police or Stasi.  Only a few citizens above suspicion were permitted to lead private lives. The film revolves around a loyal and favored East German playwright and his beautiful actress girlfriend. When a corrupt government official falls for the actress, an ambitious Stasi policeman is ordered to bug the writer’s apartment to gain incriminating evidence against the rival. It is a good story, extremely well told, and it won an Oscar in 2007 for best foreign film. 

The story plays out against the background of socialism in the German Democratic Republic or GDR with its ruthless and inhumane interrogation tactics, and its constant spying on and surveillance of an incredible number of ordinary people considered to be potential enemies of the Socialist republic.

Democratic Socialist

However, the film makes it clear that it was not just the secret police and their tactics that were at fault. The whole system was corrupt. Socialist idealism easily gave way to corruption and cronyism. Party bosses ruled with an iron hand. They ruled by fear. They struck fear into their immediate underlings, who in turn struck fear into their own subordinates.  There was no real equality. The workers’ paradise had turned into hell. The film claims that the suicide rate in the GDR was so high, that the government, which counted everything else, just stopped publishing suicide statistics.

Although we have so far been spared a Socialist revolution in the USA, many aspects of Socialism have crept in by the back door. I live next to Bridgeport, the most populous city in Connecticut. For years, Bridgeport has been a one-party city. It’s Democrat Party leaders not only control municipal government, but also usually manage to bring out enough votes to play a key role in state elections. 

A few years ago the Democrat politicians managed to bring back into office a former Mayor who had spent time in prison for corruption during his first administration. Almost immediately he cleaned house ostensibly to balance the budget but also to get rid of political enemies and find jobs for his own supporters. Here are a couple of examples. 

The Commissioner of Parks, a long time figure in Democrat politics, was told that his position was being eliminated. One of the Mayor’s aides explained that the job was no longer necessary even though the Commissioner had managed to augment his $125000 salary with $50000 of overtime pay in the previous year. The Commissioner chose to retire and was given a $15000 bonus, and a couple of years of free medical insurance. I suspect that his already generous pension was augmented by the additional overtime pay in his last year. Another official who was forced out  threatened to sue the City in order to regain his position. He did, however, indicate his willingness to settle out of court for a Million dollars. 

How many ordinary people can claim such benefits when their jobs are eliminated? Examples like the above are typical of what is going on throughout the country as politicians and so-called public service employees rack up benefits and pensions that are busting budgets from Connecticut to California. I call this back door Socialism where all are equal, but some are more equal than others. 

Young millennials may choose to ignore the sordid history of old Socialist regimes or the cronyism of local politics, but they might consider their own personal experience with contemporary Socialism. Most recent college graduates do not realize that they experienced socialism while in college. I am not talking about the professors who are overwhelmingly left-wing. 

My grandchildren tell me that the things they hated most while in college were the dorms and the cafeteria food. They couldn't wait to get out of the dorms and away from the cafeteria.  Like most of us, they wanted to live with their friends off campus and eat the kind of food they liked. They certainly did not want administrators telling them where and how to live or what was good for them to eat.

Senator Sanders may claim that there are more benevolent versions of Socialism than the ones he has praised in the past. He claims that he is a "democratic socialist." But in his incessant attacks on corporations that employ most American workers and provide them with benefits unheard of in all of human history, he sounds as rabid as the revolutionaries of old.  We just have to look at the problems in blue states like California and Illinois to make us think that democratic or back door socialism only works for a privileged few.

###

Who Are the Socialists?

Historically, Socialists never make up more than a small minority of a country’s population. Even in countries where Socialist or Communist revolutionaries triumphed and seized power, the ruling party remained an elite group with membership severely restricted. 

In Hitler’s Germany, for example, membership in the National Socialist or Nazi party never constituted more than 10% of the German people. In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) members of the Communist party also were a relatively small elite group. Membership in the Party was a privilege and a sign of status. Even today in countries like China, Cuba, and Venezuela, party members make up a small ruling minority despite massive vote totals in elections. 

The writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, arguably the greatest and most influential author of the twentieth century, did as much to shake the foundations of the Soviet Union as anything or anyone else. He began writing while a prisoner in Soviet labor camps for almost a decade. After serving his term in the labor camp, he was released into exile in central Asia. 

While in exile, he developed a cancerous tumor and was allowed to return to civilization for treatment. His famous novel, Cancer Ward, is a fictionalized version of his experience in the hospital. He is obviously the main character but he describes the doctors, nurses, and other patients with great sympathy and understanding. * 

However, he had little sympathy for Pavel Nikolayevich Rusanov, the only Communist party member in the cancer ward. Rusanov was a party official who only consented to enter this remote facility until his wife could manage to pull strings and find an opening in Moscow. “But Pavel Nikolayevich was tormented no less than by the disease itself, by having to enter the clinic as an ordinary person. He could hardly remember when last he had been in a public hospital.” Rusanov looked down on the other cancer patients as riff-raff, non-Russian Asiatics, or even criminals. 

Solzhenitsyn uses Rusanov and his wife, Kapitolivna Marveyevna, as examples of how Socialist champions of the People can morph into privileged bureaucrats.  

The Rusanovs loved the People, their great People. They served the People and were ready to give their lives for the People.

But as the years went by they found themselves less and less able to tolerate actual human beings, those obstinate creatures who were always resistant, refusing to do what they were told and, besides, demanding something for themselves.

The Rusanovs had an aversion to “teeming human beings, or jostling crowds.” They found travel on public transportation “disgusting” with loud, pushing, dirty workers struggling to get in. The worst thing was the “familiarity” of these people who would clap you on the shoulder and ask you to pass a ticket or some change along the car.

Eventually, the Rusanovs acquired an automobile of their own and avoided public transportation altogether. On railroads, they would only travel first-class on reserved compartments to avoid mixing with people “crammed in, wearing sheepskin coats and carrying buckets and sacks.”

Rusanov was a bureaucrat who had done very well in the Soviet system. He had a wife and two children, a car and a nice apartment as well as a small country place. It is true that he had never actually been a worker. He had never built anything, made anything, or designed anything. He had not even served in the military during the great patriotic war. His job had been to gather evidence and information that could be used to send enemies of the state to the labor camps.

Even though he loved Stalin, he was aware of the many shortcomings in his country. However, he blamed all Russia’s problems on speculation or what we would call private enterprise.

Over the years Rusanov had become more and more unshakably convinced that all our mistakes, shortcomings, imperfections and inadequacies were the result of speculation. Spring onions, radishes and flowers were sold on the street by dubious types, milk and eggs were sold by peasant women in the market, and yoghurt, woolen socks, even fried fish at the railway stations. There was large-scale speculation too. Lorries were being driven off “on the side” from State warehouses. If these two kinds of speculation could be torn up by the roots, everything in our country could be put right quickly and our successes would be even more striking. There was nothing wrong in a man strengthening his material position with the help of a good salary from the State and a good pension… Such a man had earned his car, his cottage in the country, and a small house in town to himself. But a car of the same make from the same factory, or a country-cottage of the same standard type, acquired a completely different criminal character if they had been bought through speculation. Rusanov dreamed, literally dreamed, of introducing public executions for speculators. Public executions would speedily bring complete health to our society. (162)

Socialism did not bring equality to the Soviet Union or to any other Communist country. Supporters of Socialism have always blamed others for its failures, and claimed that they could make it succeed. Progressives in our country, like Rusanov, blame capitalism and private enterprise for our problems. They want heads to roll, figuratively, or maybe literally.

In the Soviet Union the only true equality was found in the cancer ward. Cancer was the great equalizer and treated rich and poor alike.

*Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Cancer Ward, 1968. Penguin books, 1971.

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Socialist Economics: 1950-2020

                                           

William F. Buckley, Jr.

Income inequality is going to be one of the top issues in the 2020 Presidential campaign.  For many, income inequality is a new issue that has taken root because of the seemingly increasing gap between the rich and poor in the past few years. However, the issue goes back in time to an earlier period in American history. The origins of the issue have more to do with ideology than with any current economic statistics.

 William F. Buckley Jr., the famed Conservative commentator, first came to nation’s attention with the publication of God and Man at Yale back in 1951. The book, a review of Buckley's years at Yale was subtitled, “The Superstitions of ‘Academic Freedom’”. 

Buckley must have had an outstanding college career before graduating in 1950. For example, one year he held the prestigious position of editor of the Yale Daily News.  He  loved his Alma Mater but found some disturbing trends. 

Here I would just like to concentrate on his lengthy chapter devoted to the teaching of economics at Yale, a chapter primarily analyzing the textbooks chosen for the basic introductory course that was taken by a large number of students. All four of the textbooks believed that the biggest problem facing America in 1950 was “income inequality”. That’s right! Income Inequality or, as he titled it, THE UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME. Why was income inequality such a big issue back in 1950?

I believe the answer can be found in the background of the economists who had written the textbooks. If Buckley was about 25 in 1950, then I would guess the authors of the textbooks were born before the First World War and grew up in the era marked by the subsequent Communist Revolution in Russia and the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s. Paul Samuelson, for example, was born in 1915 and his textbook, Economics, an Introductory Analysis, was first published in 1948 and soon became one of the best-selling textbooks of all time. Samuelson’s book was one of the four reviewed by Buckley.

Samuelson and the others all believed that the experiment begun in Russia in 1917 was the wave of the future, and that the Great Depression in American had shown the inadequacies of the traditional system of free or private enterprise in dealing with modern economic issues.

In the chapter on economics Buckley cited a comparison between the Soviet and American systems from one of these textbooks. The italics are Buckley’s.

compare “ the situation in our economy with that in a socialist economy, such as the Russian or Czechoslovakian. In the Russian economy the decision to produce, let us say 20 million tons of pig iron, is made by the Central Planning board, which presumably takes into account the needs and resources of the Russian economy before it comes to a decision. The same board determines how many automobiles to produce, how many pairs of socks to manufacture, and how many acres to put into wheat. In our economy, no such institution exists. No one group or person determines how much steel to produce, how many tractors to make, or how much land to plant in cotton…. In a socialist economy, important questions of output, price, employment, and so on are planned collectively. In a capitalistic economy, these decisions are made separately by individual firms…. How does the business firm determine how much it will produce? The answer to this question is to be found in the fact that the business firm in this country is privately owned…. The determination of how much to produce, or of the price to be charged for the product, is made with one interest in mind—that of the owner. The owner’s interest is to secure as large a profit as possible. [Pp. 65-66]

Just as today, it was believed that the profit motive that was the root of all evil. In the words of one text, “the state, being free from the profit motive and having the power of compulsion, is able to make its revenue fit its expenditures (within limits) rather than the reverse.” [p. 67] Of course, profit motive brings up the image of the greedy businessman as often portrayed in popular movies of the 1930s or in the figure of Mr. Monopoly from the very popular board game.

Samuelson’s text disclaimed the image but still used it.

In this connection, it is important to understand just what a monopolist is. He is not indeed,“…a fat, greedy man with a big moustache and cigar who goes around violating the law. If he were, we could put him in jail. He is anyone important enough to affect the prices of the things that he sells and buys. To some degree that means almost every businessman”… [75]

In 1950 all four textbook authors were convinced that the experiment going on in Russia was the wave of the future and that the private enterprises system was a thing of the past that had been forever discredited by the Great Depression. The textbooks, and the professors who chose them, were all advocates of central planning, a large central government, extremely high progressive income tax rates, and confiscatory inheritance tax rates. 

Writing in 1950 I don’t suppose that the young Buckley or the textbook authors could have foreseen the great economic boom that would take place in the USA in the next few decades, a boom that not only raised millions out of poverty, but also created the wealthiest country in the history of the world. Neither could they imagine that during the same period the Soviet economy would finally be exposed as a rotten failure. At the same time as we were beginning to learn about Stalin’s brutal oppression, we were learning of people lining up at Russian markets for hours to buy inferior or even non-existent necessities. 

The Soviet Union had eliminated income inequality by making everyone poor. Years later, we would learn that they had actually created a new aristocracy of Communist party members and their friends who lorded it over their subjects. As in most socialist countries members of the ruling party made up only about 10% of the population. So much for central planning and the elimination of the profit motive.

In one of history’s ironies Paul Samuelson made a fortune with his economics textbook, In true capitalist fashion he contrived to bring out a new edition every couple of years so that students could not buy older used texts. No central board or agency prevented him or his publisher from printing and selling as many copies as the market would bear. He lived a long life and received practically every award a scholar could get. In 1996, he was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Bill Clinton, another Yale graduate who now makes millions by giving speeches to fat cats all over the world while he, his wife, and "democratic socialists" or so-called progressives complain of income inequality.

###

Cultural Socialism

Russian Orphans

Socialism is in the air in the United States and will be a big issue in the 2020 Presidential campaign. Bernie Sanders, an avowed Socialist, is one of the front-runners for the Democratic nomination. On the other hand, President Trump vows that the United States will never be a Socialist country.

For most people Socialism is a political and economic system but it is also, and always has been, a cultural phenomenon. Many years ago I read practically all the novels and historical works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian author of the twentieth century, whose writings contributed enormously to the downfall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). 

I recently found a tattered copy of Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward at a library sale. It is a novel about the inmates and staff of a cancer facility in the Soviet Union of 1954. It is semi-auto biographical since that author himself had been treated for cancer after years in USSR prison camps. The novel grips the reader from the start but it also turns a spotlight on the cultural revolution that resulted from the triumph of Socialism after the Revolution of 1917.* 

One of the patients in the ward is Dyoma, a young man who is suffering from a deadly tumor in his leg. Here is Solzhenitsyn’s account of a significant aspect of Dyoma’s early education. 

Ever since he had been in the first class, before he could read or write, Dyoma had been taught, knew for certain and fully understood that religion is a drug, a three-times reactionary dogma, of benefit only to swindlers. Because of it the working people in some places had been unable to free themselves from exploitation. But as soon as they got rid of religion they would take up arms and free themselves. And Aunt Styofa with her funny calendar, with the word ‘God’ always on her lips, with her carefree smile even in the gloomy clinic, and her pasty, was obviously a thoroughly reactionary figure. (138)

The fruits of this cultural revolution could be seen in 1954 in the plight of young Russian women like the attractive nurse Zoya in a world without religion.

Did this mean that marriage was the only alternative, that that was where happiness lay? The young men she met all danced and went for walks with the same aim in mind: to warm themselves up a bit, have their fun and then clear out. They used to say among themselves, ‘I could get married, but it never takes me more than an evening or two to find a new “friend”, so why should I bother?’ 

Indeed, why marry when women were so easy to get? If a great load of tomatoes suddenly arrived in the market, you couldn’t just triple the price of yours, they’d go rotten. How could you be inaccessible when everyone around you was ready to surrender?

A registry office wedding didn’t help either. Zoya had learnt this from the experience of Maria, a Ukrainian nurse she did alternate shifts with. Maria had relied on the registry office, but a week after the marriage her husband left her, went away and completely disappeared. For seven years, she brought up her child on her own, and on top of it all, she was trapped by her marriage. (172)

Solzhenitsyn wrote Cancer Ward more than fifty years ago but the fruits of the Socialist cultural revolution are very evident today in the massive problem that Russia has with orphans or just plain unwanted children. 

President Trump may vow that America will never be a Socialist country, but there is no doubt that the Socialist cultural revolution has already come. Its tenets have been taught in American schools for years, and the results are more and more obvious. 

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*Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Cancer Ward, 1968. Penguin book edition 1971.

Statistics 2018

                                             

On a recent trip to India Citizen Hillary Clinton found another reason for her loss in the 2016 Presidential election. To the list that includes Russia, and James Comey, the former director of the FBI, she added White Married Women living in deplorable states that contribute little to the Gross National Product (GNP).

Perhaps forgetting her origins as a white, married woman married to a controlling husband from Arkansas, she believes that these women were influenced to vote for Trump by their husbands, sons, bosses etc. She cannot believe that these married white women could have been reasonable or intelligent enough to make up their own minds.

Clinton’s statement must mirror the feelings of many of her former fans. Her complaint about “deplorables” in the campaign only mirrored Barack Obama’s remark about people clinging unreasonably to their guns and religion in the 2008 campaign.  The idea that anyone opposed to the liberal/progressive agenda must be an ignorant, superstitious redneck has become ingrained in a large segment of American society.

People like Citizen Clinton, former President Obama, and Socialist Democrat Bernie Sanders cannot believe that reason, knowledge, and experience can exist on the other side of the political spectrum. Their more progressive followers cannot even stomach independence or moderation in politics. The way in which they shout down or even ban speakers on college campuses is just a sign that they cannot imagine that these speakers have anything reasonable to say.

To act in such a way means they must ignore certain inconvenient facts or truths. Here are some statistics on current issues culled from articles in the most recent issue of the St. CroixReview, a small independent, mid-western journal of opinion.

Issue 1: Tax cuts.

In 1980, the last fiscal year of the Carter administration, total Federal tax revenues were $517 billion. By 1988 after the implementation of the Reagan tax cuts, total Federal revenues had grown to $909 billion.  The economic growth stimulated by lower tax rates had caused Federal revenues to grow by almost 50% during the Reagan years. Reducing the highest tax rate from 50% to 28% did not cause government revenue to decline.

By 2003, the year in which the so-called Bush tax cuts were passed, total Federal Revenues were $1723 billion. By 2007 Federal tax revenues had grown to about $2568 billion although they did drop in 2008 to $2524 billion at the start of the Great Recession. Once again, economic growth had led to increased Federal tax revenue despite lower tax rates.

The evidence that lower tax rates cause Federal revenue to increase would make you wonder why conservative opponents of big government usually are the ones to favor lower rates, while liberals are the ones who oppose tax cuts. Of course, despite increased revenues federal deficits continued to increase as spending regularly outstripped income.

Issue 2:  Progressivism, Socialism, and Communism

Exhaustive studies in recent years have shown that the death toll in Communist regimes during the past 100 years has been more than imagined. The death toll in the Soviet Union during the Stalin years alone is now estimated at between 60 to 70 Million. The death toll in China under Chairman Mao was also about 60 to 70 Million. These were not war casualties but murders of their own citizens.

Although they pale in comparison with Russian and China, Communist regimes in southeast Asia, like North Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia have also caused the deaths of millions either by famine, imprisonment, or execution. The Communist regime in Cuba, the darling of progressives in this country, is no exception. It is estimated that 100,000 Cubans have died at the hands of the Castro regime; 1000000 have fled the country, and about 500000 have been through the Cuban prison systems.

The numbers are still rising but the total deaths now attributed to Communist regimes in the past 100 years is put at 140 million. Why are these regimes so admired in progressive circles?  The Holocaust with its 6 Million dead is the subject of innumerable books and films. How many films have been made about Russia’s Gulag prison camps, or the millions who died in Mao’s cultural revolution?  Why is the murderous Che Guevara lionized on American college campuses? Even today thousands are fleeing Venezuela where the Communist/Socialist regime is systematically starving its own people.

Given these statistics, is it unreasonable to be suspicious of those who advocate a larger and larger role of government in our lives?

Issue 3: Tariffs.

In 2005 China’s share of global solar cell production was 7%. By 2012 China’s share of global solar panel construction had increased to 61%. During that period 30 American solar panel makers went out of business.  The Wall Street Journal always plumps for free trade but it is not free trade when a country subsidizes its own industries whose products, of often inferior quality,  flood the American market. After all, who cares if a solar panel lasts only five or ten years?

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