In 2013, Venezuela was the poster child for socialism.
It was the standard against which celebrities and politicos alike measured the United States’ economy, which they found wanting.
At Salon, David Sirota let us know that yes, this was socialism, and yes, it should incite envy in Americans. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, said Sirota, with his “full-throated advocacy of socialism,” had “racked up an economic record that . . . American president[s] could only dream of achieving.”
Fashionable opinion couldn’t say enough about Venezuela and its president. Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Oliver Stone, and Michael Moore were the tip of the iceberg.
And then, by 2017, Venezuela—the very country these commentators had been lecturing everyone about, and which Sirota had praised for its “full-throated advocacy of socialism”—suddenly became not real socialism, even though nothing about it had changed.
Well, I guess at least one thing changed: by 2016 nearly three out of four Venezuelans lacked a diet that researchers considered optimal (that’s a generous way of putting it), and nearly 16 percent had resorted to eating garbage.
Oh, we don’t want Venezuela, say our “democratic socialists” today. Why, we want Sweden!
This kind of claim might be more believable had so many of the people making it not cheered Venezuela right up to the moment that starvation and chaos were everywhere.
There’s plenty to say regarding Sweden: (1) its “socialist” policies were made possible by wealth created under an essentially capitalist economy (as recently as the 1950s, remember, government spent less as a percentage of GDP in Sweden than in the U.S.); (2) Swedes earn about 50 percent more in the U.S., in our supposedly wicked economy; and (3) since Sweden’s explosion of social welfare spending there have been zero jobs created on net in the private sector.
No, thanks.
In recent years, sympathy for socialism in the U.S. has grown rapidly. No doubt one reason was the financial crisis of 2008. Critics felt certain that this episode revealed a profound sickness at the heart of American capitalism. Yet the crisis would certainly not have happened without the twin evils of government policy and Federal Reserve intervention, both of which are something like the opposite of capitalism.
And there’s another, more fundamental reason: it’s an easy argument to follow. (1) Those people over there have lots of money. (2) You would like some money. (3) We are happy to facilitate the transfer.
“The rich,” meanwhile, are caricatured and despised as a matter of routine. And while it’s true that some people have come by their wealth in disreputable ways, made possible by government, socialist critics are not making fine distinctions like this. It is wealth per se, no matter how acquired, that is to be condemned.
Not a moment’s thought is applied to wondering what the rich might actually do for the economy. We are to believe that they roll around in their cash until it sticks to their sweaty bodies.
Not a word about investment in capital goods, which make the economy more physically productive and increase real incomes. Nothing about capital maintenance, which keeps the structure of production up and running. Nothing about saving at all, since most popular critics of capitalism appear to think consumption is what really contributes to economic health—as if simply using things up could make us rich.
From this standpoint, socialism seems to make sense. There are no unintended consequences of government intervention worth thinking about. We have rich people over there, and things we’d like to do with their money over here, so what’s the problem? If there’s an outcome we want, why, we simply legislate it into existence! Want higher wages? Just pass a law!
If this were true, poverty could have been conquered anytime, anywhere. We ought to call the folks in Bangladesh and let them know: poverty is over! You just need to pass some laws!
Now were we to impose the American regulatory apparatus, and American labor laws and wage requirements, on Bangladesh, virtually the entire country would become instantly unemployable and poverty would only intensify.
It’s almost as if there’s something other than regulation and redistribution that accounts for economic progress.
Among the great merits of Socialism Sucks are that it’s short, engaging, and easily digested—which is precisely what the anti-socialist, pro-freedom side needs right now.
Your guides on the tour of the unfree world you are about to embark upon could scarcely be better chosen, I might add. Bob Lawson, who has done extensive research on the economic freedom of the various countries of the world, has important insight into what works and what doesn’t. Ben Powell’s book on sweatshops, published by Cambridge University Press, explains what needs to be done (and what needs to be avoided) for the developing world to prosper—as well as the various ways that ignorant, if sometimes well-intentioned, Westerners retard that process.
Turn the page, and your journey begins. The good news: when it’s all done, you can close the book and be back in semi-capitalist America.
At least for now, that is.
Tom Woods