A recent poll found that 51% of millennials had a favorable view of socialism. Folks, this is frightening on many fronts. This is an indictment of our educational system, for schools are not teaching what this social, political and economic system is and what it has done to the people and places where it has been applied.
Socialism, in its popular form, seems to trace its beginning back to Karl Marx, although economic and social writers and thinkers had toyed with the idea before him. In fact, some utopian communities had tried this system, with nearly all failing because it did not meet basic human needs.
Marx, a German writer, philosopher, economic theorist, wrote two influential books, The Communist Manifesto (1848) and, with lifelong friend and benefactor, Fredriech Engels, Das Kapital, a three volume work not fully published until after his death in 1883. For simplicities sake, his ideas were that all means of production and distribution of goods and services were to be socially owned. No one would have a lion’s share of anything produced.
In practice, this philosophy introduced widespread misery and death wherever it was implemented. Marx believed that class warfare would usher in this utopian world through struggles between the haves and the have nots. “From each according to his abundance to each according to his needs” would be the mantra of socialists. Those who had would be forced to subsidize those who did not, a redistribution of wealth.
Marx envisioned a system embraced by the majority of people in a nation-state, perhaps even voted in democratically. But that did not happen. Socialism, the progeny of Marx’ philosophy, became a forced system, a top down implementation. Nations which used this have left behind death and destruction. The Soviet Union, under Lenin, became the first major communist state. Eventually private property and the free market were abolished, and to stay in power it is estimated that the Soviets caused at least 60 million deaths to maintain socialism.
China is another example of socialism on steroids. Chinese leader Mao Ze Dung was a disciple of Marx, and because of the lack of accurate records, we do not for sure
how many millions died under that iteration of socialism.
National Socialists was what the Nazis called themselves, and although they did not eliminate private property, all Germans were expected to support the regime. We know that before and during World War 2 that as many as 60 million died.
Modern states that feature socialism are Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela. Cuba suffers under the heavy hand of Marxist leaders, from the Castro brothers to their hand picked successors. It is still difficult for Cubans to leave their island “paradise”, to escape socialism. North Korea is ruled by Kim Jong Un, the third in a line of Marxist believing masters, and most of its people live in poverty and suffer the consequences of those socialist policies imposed there.
Venezuela, once the richest nation in South America, but has become a basket case under the leadership of Marxist rulers Hugo Chavez and Nicholas Maduro. Consumer goods have almost disappeared, electrical power poor at best and personal freedoms vastly curtailed.
Those in America who wish any form of socialism to take over are ignorant of both the history and beliefs of socialism. If any form of the Green New Deal is implemented as envisioned by those on the left, we will go from the “shining city on a hill” to a poor eviscerated shell of what we have been during our history.
Schools, from elementary to secondary to elite colleges have failed in teaching how socialism enslaved and impoverished people. As George Santayana once wrote, “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it”. Let us remember the course of socialism, littered with the corpses of those who were victims of it, and vow to fight the imposition of that sordid ideology on our fair land.