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THE TRUTH ABOUT SOCIALISM: IT DOESN’T CARE ABOUT THE MIDDLE CLASS. IT’S ABOUT
KEEPING THE RULING CLASS’ POWER

COMMENTARY Progressivism


THE TRUTH ABOUT SOCIALISM: IT DOESN’T CARE ABOUT THE MIDDLE CLASS. IT’S ABOUT
KEEPING THE RULING CLASS’ POWER

Mar 6th, 2019 3 min read
COMMENTARY BY
Lee Edwards, Ph.D. @LeeWEdwards

Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought

Lee Edwards is a leading historian of American conservatism and the author or
editor of 25 books.
Socialism has little regard for the middle class. It’s all about securing and
maintaining power for the ruling class. NELSON ALMEIDA / Contributor/ Getty
Images


KEY TAKEAWAYS

After 20 years of socialism, Venezuela is a failed state.

Nicaragua’s Marxist leader Daniel Ortega is another example of the lust for
power and control that characterizes socialism.

Socialism is a rigid ideology that always ends in tyranny.

Copied

>  Q: What did socialists use before candles? A: Electricity. 

It’s an old joke, sure. But it’s no laughing matter. Just ask the people
of Venezuela.

The socialist regime there nationalized the electricity sector a dozen years
ago. Today, blackouts in the once-prosperous Latin American nation have become
routine. Electricity isn’t all that’s in short supply. Gasoline is scarce in the
oil-rich nation, as are food and medicine.

Meanwhile, the regime concentrates on violently repressing protests and burning
humanitarian aid as it approaches its borders.

Get exclusive insider information from Heritage experts delivered straight to
your inbox each week. Subscribe to The Agenda >>

After 20 years of socialism, Venezuela is a failed state.

And that should surprise no one. Socialism is a rigid ideology that always ends
in tyranny.

The prime example is the Soviet Union. Lenin and Stalin’s iron rule brought
death to 20-25 million victims. “Enemies of the state” were executed by firing
squads, sent to forced labor camps in the Gulag, perished in country-wide forced
famines, experimented on in “psychiatric” hospitals, and summarily deported from
their homes to the distant steppes of Russia.

No less totalitarian in their practices were the Castro brothers, who promised
freedom and democracy when they came to power in Cuba. Six decades later, the
Cuban people are still waiting for the first free election.

Socialism always promises progress, but it inevitably delivers scarcity,
corruption and decay.

Eastern Europe under communism became a monument to bureaucratic inefficiency
and waste. Throughout the Soviet bloc, life expectancy declined dramatically and
infant mortality soared.

Upon gaining independence, India trod a socialist path for 40 years. It led to a
never-ending cycle of poverty and economic deterioration. Finally, Indian
leaders began looking to Adam Smith rather than Karl Marx to guide their
economy. Today, it boasts the largest middle class in the free world.

Socialism has little regard for the middle class. It’s all about securing and
maintaining power for the ruling class.

Consider the People’s Republic of China. Mired in Maoist revolutionary rhetoric,
it was one of the world’s poorest countries for its first three decades. Then,
Deng Xiaoping introduced “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Forty years later, the PRC boasts the world’s second largest economy, but its
citizens remain deprived of basic human rights and civil liberties.

The Communist Party does not allow a free press or free speech, competitive
elections, an independent judiciary, free travel or a representative parliament.
Instead, President Xi Jinping has instituted a cult of personality that rivals
the one-time worship of the so-called Great Helmsman, Mao Zedung.

Nicaragua’s Marxist leader Daniel Ortega is another example of the lust for
power and control that characterizes socialism. His under-reported reign of
terror has resulted in the deaths of more than 300 dissidents in just the last
few years.

All of these horrors are inevitable because socialism is built on a fatal
conceit.

Modern socialists believe that the world has become so complicated, so complex,
so globalized, that regular citizens just can’t manage things. We, and only we
(say the socialists) are equipped to run things. Hence, for example, it’s
imperative to nationalize health care, since “the little people” can’t be
trusted to make intelligent, informed decisions about their health care.

Rather than empower the common man, socialists believe in empowering
bureaucracy. In their minds, bureaucrats will always make decisions based on
science and dispassionate reason – and make sure those decisions are implemented
and enforced efficiently.

It’s an elitist, intellectually arrogant belief, and it’s dangerous. As Ronald
Reagan noted in a long-ago campaign speech for Barry Goldwater: “Either we
accept the responsibility for our own destiny, or we abandon the American
Revolution and confess that an intellectual [elite] in a far-distant capitol can
plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

In “The Road to Serfdom,” the Nobel Laureate F. A. Hayek dismissed the utopian
dream of “democratic socialism” as “unachievable.” Why? Because it is based on
the fatal conceit that a galaxy of bureaucrats can collect, analyze and direct
the individual actions of 300 million Americans.

“America will never be a socialist country!” So President Trump declared last
month in his rousing State of the Union speech. That should be the fervent
prayer of all Americans who prize liberty and wish to live our lives our way.

This piece originally appeared in Fox News


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