Also please read my article, “How Egypt’s Presidential Election Will Change the Middle East and the World.”
It’s amazing that almost a century after the institution of Communism in Russia and almost a quarter-century after its fall the most basic mistake of the Marxist-Leninist system is still being ignored by those who are called the “smartest” people in society. And it isn’t being taught to young people either, many of whom are repeating an old mistake that has already cost so much in bloodshed and suffering.
Here is the simple, catastrophic mistake:
The capitalist is greedy and short-sighted. But the commissar looks after the interests of everyone and is fair and disinterested.
In short, the private individual who is wealthy or in business is expected to be narrowly selfish and inefficient. Adam Smith successfully addressed this issue more than two centuries ago by discussing how individual greed and ambition could be harnessed by society. Since then, that concept has produced what have been by far the most just, democratic, and successful societies in human history.
On the contrary, Communism, which depended on an all-powerful central government and society throwing itself on the mercy of the state, produced concentration camps, repression, suffering, death, and ultimately failed totally.
Yet in the current hegemonic Western thinking, the government official is expected to have no personality, no character, and no personal interests. He is purely the servant of the people, though centuries of history—including pre-capitalist history—showed that idea to be ridiculous.
Why should the commissar be so trusted? Can’t he use government to enrich himself and his friends? Doesn’t he use the power of government to force his individual preferences on others? Won’t his thirst for power be equally desperate as anyone in the private sector?
And several factors make the situation with the commissar even worse. For example, the money he’s spending isn’t even his. He is far more shielded from personal responsibility for his mistakes or misdeeds.
Government can be the enemy of the people; the rich can be the enemy of the people. The goal—most brilliantly realized in the U.S. Constitution—is to balance and restrain everyone who can accumulate too much power to make sure that they don’t. Power is dispersed; maximum liberty is given to the individual citizen. It works, or should I say, worked?
And at the present moment the threat for the well-being of the people and system comes from greedy rich government not greedy rich people.
We are not living in some mid-nineteenth-century abstraction of laissez-faire capitalism. Today the large or small businessman is constrained by the need to make a product that the public wants; to make it at a price that is low enough to produce sales but high enough to make a profit; the need to pay workers a high enough wage so that they will do the necessary labor but is constrained by having to have the funds to pay them. He must obey the (increasingly complex) law and probably deal with unions so that they do not go on strike. He has to avoid opprobrium in the community and media and maintain a reputation sufficient to do business successfully. And he has to compete with rivals over price, quality, and market share, often dancing on a knife edge. He may have to work over-time and face tremedous risk and stress. Yet a”big profit” may well consist of one part in twenty.
The government official faces hardly any constraint at all and need not do anything productive for public wealth or welfare. He need not prove anything beneficial exists in his work, meet a payroll, provide a profit, and even out-do others since he has no competition to make him strive harder. He takes no risk and except for the most egregious actions cannot lose his job or be singled out for criticism by outside institutions.
Why is this contrast so hard to understand in the twenty-first century?
Oh, and to add insult to injury–but to illustrate my point–remember that President Barack Obama’s most high-handed appointees are called…czars.
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