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The Top Ten Reasons Why Socialism is Wrong

1. Marx’s Labor Theory of Value, adapted from Ricardo, is wrong. Work is not exploitation and profit is not theft. (For more on this subject see Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.)

2. Historical Materialism begs the question of human agency. It is unexplained how socialists come to have consciousness that is “authentic,” while capitalists have “false consciousness.” Marx’s theory underplays the role of ideas and ethics in economies (i.e. the “superstructure” of the economy that is but a reflection of materialist forces).

3. There is the unresolved question of how classes arose to begin with. Did they arise through the use of coercion to repress lower classes? Did they arise due to inequalities in human characteristics?Did classes arise because of the private ownership of the means of production? If so, then why are there social classes or castes in countries that have cooperative, collective, or tribal social-economic arrangements?

4. Marxism is a self-stultifying ideology that renders life meaningless. Mankind’s desire to achieve is obviously due to human nature, and not materialist forces. It is no coincidence that socialist societies lead to high levels of anomie and alienation, contrary to Marxist claims to the contrary that capitalism causes such social effects. The reason such maladies are prevalent in socialist countries is because social valuation of the individual is diminished to nearly nothing.

5. Marx’s theory of historical materialism and the “inevitable triumph of socialism,” is obviously flawed. Socialism lasting any considerable period of time in a polity has always developed due to Marxist-Leninist or Maoist radicals ushering in bloody putsches or coup d’etats in economically backwards states. This is the opposite of what Marx predicted. Marxism predicted that there would be spontaneous worker’s revolts in advanced capitalist societies around the globe, and not elite-organized socialist “revolutions” in backwards countries like Russia and China. World War I exposed the false notion held by socialists that the war would lead to a worker’s strike and mass defections from the armies due to “workers’ solidarity.”

6. Marx’s claim that the “Iron Law of Wages” would lead inexorably to a decline in standard of living among the proletariat tending towards subsistence living is incorrect. In the most advanced capitalist states, the standard of living increased ever upwards. This is because an economy based on mass production leads to cheaper goods and a competitive labor market buoys demand and wages for skilled labor. The counter-argument that the standard of living increased due to labor unions is obviously false in the U.S.; labor unions in America have always been relatively weak and many times unions claim labor improvements that arose due to market competition. One former union boss who spoke at an Occupy DC rally recently confessed that “progressive labor is a revolutionary communist organization.” Unions are a type of labor cartel that makes profitable businesses increasingly unfeasible.

7. Equality of means has not been achieved in any socialist state of any kind in world history. Every single socialist state has been led by elites with a miserable underclass far underfoot. I defy a socialist to name one counterfactual. The underclass is typically lied to (e.g. offered “Bread, land and peace,” but receiving none of the sort), and the disparity between rich and poor actually increases after the “revolution.” So ironically, socialist policies lead to greater inequality of means, rather than more equality. For more on why socialist systems always lead to oppression, see Michels’ “Iron Law of Oligarchy.”

8. The fraudulent obsession with equality espoused by socialists was perhaps best summed up by Margaret Thatcher, who in a speech to the socialist opposition, demonstrated the absurdity of her opponents’ position. While gesticulating with her fingers to illustrate her concept visually, she showed that “(Socialists) would rather the poor be poorer, provided the rich were less rich.” [See: “Margaret Thatcher on Socialism” on YouTube.]

9. Socialism is only a critique of capitalism and not a self-sufficient economic system. It advises how to redistribute wealth, but not how to create it. Socialists are unable to persuasively answer the “then what?” question of what happens when capitalism is destroyed or it collapses. Apparently, eternal prosperity ensues, but the causal linkage is not adequately explained.

10. Socialism is not consistent with human nature. Human beings are not innately altruists, because as a species, mankind is driven by the desire to procreate, and all that seminal act entails. Societies have succeeded based on hunting, gathering, production, and even war, but redistribution is a static and deteriorating model of economic organization.

The implication of modeling an economic system on socialist redistribution for the contrived ethic of “equality” is no less than the destruction of civilization itself. And this is by design. Marx set out to foment world revolution prior to developing the philosophical system that justified it. As Marx quoted Goethe in the Eighteenth Brumaire, “All that exists deserves to perish.”

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