\u2018Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.\u2019 \u2013 Winston Churchill<\/p>\n
When I came to Australia from the USSR in 1978, people expected me to be shocked. I was. Not because of gum trees smelling like a sauna, kangaroos with joeys in their pouches, or the fantastic, almost empty beaches. Not because of the easy\u2011going locals whose jumble of supposedly English words I could barely understand, combined with their remarkable respect and kindness toward an immigrant who did not have a cent to his name.<\/p>\n
For all of this, I was deeply grateful, sometimes to the point of tears.<\/p>\n
What shocked me was something else entirely: Australians were remarkably relaxed about their home\u2011grown communists, socialists, and assorted radicals of many labels, every one of them eager to \u2018liberate\u2019 this wonderful country from \u2026 what, exactly?<\/p>\n
Even they did not seem sure, muttering vaguely about \u2018the system\u2019 while radiating enthusiasm and youthful sincerity.<\/p>\n
No one took them seriously.<\/p>\n
The pubs were full, the beer was cold, the footy was exciting, and the Aussie dollar was as strong as a 20\u2011year\u2011old\u2019s morning erection. Nobody cared about my political views, religion, colour, or gender \u2013 they only wanted to know what kind of person I was.<\/p>\n
The weekend edition of The Age looked and weighed like a mid\u2011sized suitcase and cost 14 cents \u2013 the same price as a litre of premium petrol. The entire Communist Party of Australia\u2019s float in the Moomba parade was a huge red sign with a hammer and sickle painted on it, mounted on five bicycles, each pushed by an octogenarian. That was essentially the whole Communist Party of Australia (Marxist\u2011Leninist \u2013 meaning they took their instructions and funding from Moscow rather than Beijing). The crowd neither jeered nor laughed at this feeble display. Sports\u2011mad Australians did not kick a man when he was down. It simply was not cricket.<\/p>\n
My attempts to \u2018enlighten\u2019 my new countrymen, in my best broken English, were met with polite nods, raised eyebrows, and equally polite expressions of interest. I naively believed that my eloquent descriptions of the evils of Marxism were having an impact. Later I realised this was the classic Aussie way: let a man have his say while quietly keeping your own opinion. It was also one of the most cherished Australian habits \u2013 live and let live.<\/p>\n
Still, I was not as na\u00efve as I thought. When I found myself working in the middle of nowhere with outback Aboriginal patients and discovered that there was no personal ownership of land, only communal ownership, I immediately recognised that Indigenous Australians had been herded into a Soviet\u2011style kolkhoz. It was a sobering discovery. Yet what amazed me even more was the eagerness with which well\u2011to\u2011do Australians donated money to obviously extremist, radical left\u2011wing causes. Many of these donors were passionate believers in the vague ideas of \u2018social justice\u2019, wealth redistribution, and Australia\u2019s future as a socialist country. They voted Labor and were unaware that the ALP\u2019s national platform spoke of building \u2018democratic socialism\u2019.<\/p>\n
Whenever I discussed Marxism (I no longer do), I would ask two questions of the person denouncing the failures of capitalism:<\/p>\n
Have you read The Communist Manifesto?<\/p>\n
Do you realise what communists will do to you, your family and your property if they gain political power?<\/p>\n
Without exception, the answers were \u2018no\u2019. Not one supporter of socialism had read The Communist Manifesto. Not one understood the consequences for themselves, their families, or their property. They imagined a kindly, soft\u2011focus socialism without the slightest understanding of its nature. For example, they did not grasp that Marxism recognises no concept of private property; it treats it as stolen and illegitimate. Under such a system, anything you own can be taken from you. Nor is there such a thing as habeas corpus; your very existence can depend on the whim of a party official.<\/p>\n
I had to study Marxist theory and pass examinations on it in a Soviet medical school in order to graduate. More importantly, I have lived under both socialist and capitalist systems.<\/p>\n
There are many varieties of socialism \u2013 Russian, Chinese, Danish, German, European Union \u2013 almost as many as there are revolutionaries burning to bring universal happiness to mankind and, not incidentally, to win political power. The desire for power burns 24\/7, regardless of the wishes of those they claim they want to \u2018liberate\u2019. These varieties differ in detail, but they all share three common elements and one universal principle.<\/p>\n
First, they need a victim group or groups on whose behalf the socialists must seize political power, in order to \u2018protect\u2019 them from exploiters.<\/p>\n
Second, they need a common enemy against whom the whole society should direct its hatred.<\/p>\n
Third, they need a monopoly on power, which they will never willingly share.<\/p>\n
The victim group can change. Early socialists chose the proletariat, the working class, as their preferred victim in need of advocacy and protection. (The Latin word \u2018proletarius\u2019 describes a person who has nothing to offer the state but his children \u2013 in essence, the contents of his testicles and ovaries.)<\/p>\n
When the proletariat became prosperous and evolved into a middle class, socialists had to invent new victims: the environment, members of the LGBT community, global warming, solar energy, the Palestinian cause, Indigenous causes, open\u2011border immigration and so on \u2013 anything that undermines liberal democracy and smooths their path to power.<\/p>\n
The common enemy can also change. One reason socialists are so angry with Israel is their fury at what they see as the \u2018betrayal\u2019 by Israel\u2019s founding socialists when they chose the capitalist road and rejected the socialist one. Germany\u2019s National Socialists chose the Jews as enemies; the Soviets chose \u2018class enemies\u2019; the Khmer Rouge selected the educated; the Chinese communists targeted \u2018capitalist roaders and running dogs of capitalism\u2019. Every socialist regime needs its own enemy. One look at the hate\u2011contorted faces of weekend \u2018protesters\u2019 in our CBD streets shows how prophetic George Orwell was when he described the Two Minutes Hate in his novel 1984.<\/p>\n
Monopoly on power is self\u2011explanatory. The clearest example is the sham Soviet election with a single approved name on the ballot. Modern socialists move toward monopoly more subtly, for example by importing large numbers of third\u2011world migrants who then reliably vote for them.<\/p>\n
And now, drum roll.<\/p>\n
The main principle of socialism is as simple as a cow\u2019s moo: \u2018We will work less and less and be paid more and more.\u2019 Margaret Thatcher summed it up: \u2018The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people\u2019s money.\u2019<\/p>\n
The beauty of this principle, for its advocates, is that they regard themselves as altruistic fighters for freedom, justice, and the common good. They insist, \u2018We are not fighting for ourselves but for the oppressed, depressed and dispossessed.\u2019 This wins applause and votes. That is when the so\u2011called Tytler cycle begins:<\/p>\n
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world\u2019s greatest civilisations has been 200 years.<\/p>\n
These nations have progressed through this sequence:<\/p>\n
From bondage to spiritual faith;<\/p>\n
From spiritual faith to great courage;<\/p>\n
From courage to liberty;<\/p>\n
From liberty to abundance;<\/p>\n
From abundance to selfishness;<\/p>\n
From selfishness to apathy;<\/p>\n
From apathy to dependence;<\/p>\n
From dependence back into bondage.<\/p>\n
Where are we on this scale? I fear we are on the second step from the bottom. Using the main principle of socialism, any economy \u2013 even the strongest \u2013 will eventually collapse. Those who gain political power by promising \u2018social justice\u2019 must either ditch their promises or plunge the country into massive debt, because it is impossible to work less and less and receive more and more. Sooner or later, the economy fails.<\/p>\n
This raises a simple question: do the people telling us these beautiful fairy tales understand what they are doing? Do they understand where they are leading us, our children and our grandchildren? Do they grasp the consequences of their generosity with \u2018public money\u2019 for voters who naively believe that the state\u2019s coffers are bottomless? Do our fearless leaders, the pursuers of \u2018social justice\u2019, understand that they must either abandon their promises or borrow staggering sums that our children and grandchildren will have to repay?<\/p>\n
If they do not understand this, they are fools. If they do understand it and still persist in dragging us into poverty with these policies, they are criminals, scammers and tricksters. Of course there will always be \u2018useful idiots\u2019 who sincerely believe that free cheese is theirs by right. I have news for them: free cheese exists only in a mousetrap, and only for the second mouse. A system built by fools or criminals on this basis cannot end well.<\/p>\n
It gets worse, because the next stage of socialism is communism. There, according to the classic formula, you do not need to work at all \u2013 or only a little, if you feel like it. The main principle of communism is, \u2018From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.\u2019 It is not supposed to arrive overnight; it is promised in 20 or 30 years. In other words, \u2018Let us string you along for half a century and then it will no longer be our problem.\u2019<\/p>\n
To illustrate this mentality: at the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1961, Nikita Khrushchev declared that the current generation of Soviet people would live under communism and promised that a basically communist society would be built by 1980.<\/p>\n
You already know how that promise ended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy; its inherent virtue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,9616,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-505067","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-flat-white","11":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}