The following is a list of the ten worst blunders committed
by socialist and collectivist states throughout history. These blunders range
from crimes of pure negligence and stupidity to acts of violence and genocide. I
have tried not to pick isolated incidents (of which there are many), but rather
the items on this list are microcosms of the larger structural flaws in collectivist
ideology. This list stands as a stark remainder of the failures caused by the
implementation of socialism throughout history and why it should never be attempted
again.
10. Chilean Inflation
Winning by a narrow margin in the 1970 election, Chilean
president Salvador Allende became the first Marxist to be democratically
elected as the leader of a Latin American country. During his first speech as
head of state, Allende vowed to “destroy the economic basis for capitalism” and
nationalize Chile’s copper mines—the main source of the country’s income. To
the contempt of Chilean conservatives, businessmen, and the United States
government, he attempted just that. Through excessive spending and buying out of
shareholders, Allende was able to requisition most of the nation’s mines and
factories. In 1972, however, the effort had become increasingly militarized,
with armed party members seizing many of them by force.
These immoral and anti-capitalist tendencies of his
eventually ran the Chilean economy into a fatal nosedive. By 1972, the
government was 300 million dollars in debt, real wages had dropped nearly ten
percent, and the inflation rate was 163%. The country was also relying more on
agricultural imports to feed its people, increasing 84% since 1970.
Due to the gross mismanagement of the economy, American banks stopped giving the
Chilean government loans, and as a result, Allende printed more money. When he
was finally thrown out of power in a military coup in 1973, the inflation rate
had reached a whopping 508%.
Salvador Allende’s successor, Augusto Pinochet initiated free market policies
by privatizing the factories and paying the nation’s debt. The economy finally
improved and the inflation rate stabilized.
Imbecilic monetary policy and economic mismanagement are
trademarks of collectivist regimes. When a government engages in such
irresponsible behaviour as seizing property and printing money, it is no wonder
that other countries would be wary of doing business with them. Chile was
certainly not the only socialist nation to have a runaway inflation rate, but it
stands as a perfect example of how economic mismanagement can cripple the
economy of such regimes.
9. Suppression of Free Speech in East
Germany
The Stasi spied on you before Obama made it cool.
From 1961 to 1990, Germany was split
into two states by the Berlin Wall. The eastern half of Germany, known as the
German Democratic Republic, was governed by the Stasi, a brutal secret police
force. The Stasi were meticulous at
gathering information and keeping files on individuals they considered
subversive, which in GDR, was just about everyone. Speaking out against the
regime or discussing the Berlin Wall was strictly forbidden in GDR and
censorship of information was strictly enforced by the state. If you were
suspected of questioning the tenets of communism, then you would be imprisoned
and tortured by the Stasi as a political prisoner. Other topics that were similarly
forbidden to discuss in GDR included capitalism, fascism, pollution, the
standard of living, education, homosexuality, pornography, alcoholism, and
depression. Art that was not approved by the state was also banned.
The split of Germany into two halves is significant because
it acts as a natural experiment to show what happens when two previously
identical nations adopt radically different policies. Under the
capitalist-leaning west, the country prospered, whereas in the socialist East,
a concrete wall was built to prevent people from fleeing. Proponents of
collectivism never cease to argue how capitalism is tyrannical and oppressive,
but if you compare the freedom of speech in GDR to the Federal Republic of
Germany, it is the socialist state that is more oppressive. It is common among
most socialist countries that freedom of speech is curtailed to some extent in
order to maintain the illusion of homogenous public support. One would be hard-pressed to argue how
capitalism is more oppressive since freedom of speech and of the press is
usually taken for granted in open societies. Unfortunately, we will never know
the true cost that censorship had in GDR since great works of art that did not
fit the vision of the state were hidden, destroyed, or were simply never
created.
8. Personality Cult in Gaddafi’s
Libya
In Socialist Libya, you can have a watch in any colour you want, as long as it's Gaddafi.
In 1969, when he was only 27 years
old, Muammar Gaddafi overthrew King Idris of Libya in a bloodless coup and
began his 42 year-long rule of the country, which he later renamed The Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab
Jamahiriya. His political ideas, outlined in The Green Book, can be loosely described as the marriage of
socialism and Islam. In typical fashion of both ideologies, Gaddafi fostered a
cult of personality that would make Stalin or Saddam Hussein seem like the
pinnacle of modesty in comparison. Prior to his violent overthrow in 2011, it
would have been impossible to walk down the streets of Tripoli without seeing
images of the dictator plastered all over the city. Much of the wealth
generated by the country by its oil reserves was siphoned off by Gaddafi to
fund his extravagant projects and vacations abroad. He also used state funds to
supply weapons to global terrorist organisations and his government was
responsible for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.
The Great Socialist People’s Libyan
Arab Jamahiriya was just one of many socialist regimes ruled by a dictator who
used the state as his personal bank account. Gaddafi didn’t give a fuck about
the Libyan people, he only cared about himself. His idiosyncrasies, such as his
all-female-virgin bodyguards, his massive bulletproof tent, and his eccentric
outfits testify to his narcissism and corruption. Libya would have likely been
a better place today had its wealth not been embezzled by Muammar Gaddafi.
7. Venezuela Shortage of Consumer
Goods
Fuck, they're all out of Gatorade.
It is characteristic of socialist
regimes that their economic policies are self-destructive and betray a lack of
understanding with basic laws of supply and demand. Due to its recently
discovered oil reserves, Venezuela has become a moderately wealthy country, but
its socialist leanings have kept the general public from enjoying any
prosperity. During the reign of Hugo Chavez, extensive price controls were
enforced that prevented certain goods from being sold above a given price. Even
after Chavez’s death, the country continues to pass idiotic controls, such as a
30% ceiling on profits earlier this year.
All these regulations and price controls have produced results one might
expect—widespread shortage of consumer goods. Some examples of products that
are absent from Venezuelan store shelves include flour, sugar, cooking oil, deodorant,
milk, butter, beer, coffee, and most desperately, toilet paper. The nation’s
Toyota and Chrysler plants recently closed their doors as tires also became
increasingly scarce. Many citizens rely on black markets to acquire certain
goods, and must deal with the exorbitant prices and endless queues just to purchase
a small bag of rice.
If you never bother to consider the
long-term consequences of such policies, price-controls and profit ceilings
seem like they might be beneficial, especially to the poor. Many people also take
the wide selection of consumer goods in American grocery stores for granted.
Most don’t bother to think where these goods come from, why they were produced,
or how they were transported to the grocery store. Thus, many people don’t stop
to consider how price controls will affect the supply of goods and assume that
if the state is making things cheaper, then it must be for the better. However, those firms that produce and
supply these goods do so to turn a profit.
If there is no money to be made by supplying Venezuela with toilet paper
or deodorant, then firms will take their business elsewhere. The disastrous
effects of price controls in socialist Venezuela demonstrates the disconnect
between fluffy socialist rhetoric and the cold facts of reality and human
nature. The dictatorship of the proletariat is not a world full of cheap and
plentiful goods, but a world in which you wipe your ass with newsprint.
6. Communist China Starves to Death
Between the three years of 1959 to
1961, China suffered a famine in which 40 million people starved to death. The
famine was caused almost exclusively by the distribution policies of the
government, but those sympathetic to Maoist communism erroneously put the blame
on “enemies of the state” or natural disasters. When the government of China
initiated The Great Leap Forward, private farms were abolished and the
responsibility of grain distribution was placed in the hands of the state. The
communes in charge of food production had to produce enough grain to meet
state-imposed quotas, and the surplus grain they kept for themselves. However,
as the government quotas increased, there became less and less grain left over
as surplus. It also didn’t help that the communes had adopted idiotic farming
techniques contrived by Soviet pseudoscientist, Trofim Lysenko, which further
stunted crop yields. As a result, all the grain being produced by Chinese
communes by 1959 was being seized by the state and the peasants starved en
masse. For the next three years, China would experience the worst famine in
recorded history, marked by violent crime, suicide, death, widespread
cannibalization, and the market of human flesh. The eating of children and
babies was common, where parents would swap each other’s children so they didn’t
have to eat their own offspring.
Unable to see why the glorious and
infallible doctrines of communism could cause such a catastrophe, the Chinese
government naturally blamed “enemies of the state” and sent armed thugs across
the country to seize any food they could find from peasants. They also
initiated what came to be known as the
Four Pests Campaign, which encouraged the killing of rats and sparrows,
thought to be main destroyers of crops. Millions of sparrows were put to death.
However, this only prolonged the famine since the mass death of sparrows
allowed crop-eating insects like locusts to thrive and this further stunted the
crop production.
Don't kill the sparrows. They're your comrades.
Widespread famines are not uncommon
in socialist countries, but they are almost unheard of in capitalist ones. The
fact that even some of these famines were the direct consequence of policies
enforced by those socialist governments is a strong indictment against this
reprehensible ideology. Fuck Chairman Mao.
5. Lev Mekhlis
On the eastern front during World
War Two, each division under Soviet command was appointed with one political
commissar. The purpose of these commissars was to instil party solidarity with
the soldiers and to ensure the war against Germany was conducted according to
communist party guidelines. During the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa,
they proved themselves to be largely ineffectual, as they frequently
substituted the orders of the commanding officers with their own. This led to
many needless and bloody Soviet defeats. One of the most notorious commissars
was named Lev Zakharovich Mekhlis. He was a favourite of Josef Stalin, being such
a vocal proponent, as well as participant in the Great Purges of 1936-38. For
the whole course of the war, Mekhlis was sent around from headquarters to
headquarters, executing Red Army officers for alleged insubordination. His
presence was resented by the entire army. Mekhlis was adamant that deserters,
malingers, and panic mongers were to be shot on the spot.
He also interfered in matters of command, being partially responsible for the
fall of Sebastopol and Kerch to German forces in 1942. His orders at Kerch
forbade the troops from digging in, and forced the command to move to the front
trench. The Germans shelled the front trench and as a result, all Soviet division
commanders at the battle were killed.
The nature of collectivism and
socialism allows those like Mekhlis who have no discernable talents besides
following orders and murdering people to rise to positions of authority.
Mekhlis knew how to suck up to Stalin and he could spout socialist rhetoric,
but he was a demonstrably ineffective military commander and he was responsible
for thousands of unnecessary deaths. Collectivist ideology breeds complicit
pieces of human waste like Lev Mekhlis.
4. Explosion of Birth Rates in
Communist Romania
During the early 1960s, Communist Romania
was approaching zero population growth. Nicolai Ceausescu, the dictator of the
country, decided that if the Romanian population was to grow, it would be through
government legislation. Thus his government passed laws that abolished
abortion, outlawed contraceptives, and divorce, collectively known as Decree770. Gynaecology exams were also mandated and pregnant women were closely
monitored by the government to ensure that they did not get an abortion.
Romanian couples who did not have children were forced to payer higher taxes,
whereas non-working mothers received subsidies from the state. As a result of
these policies, Romania’s birth rates exploded, nearly out of control. In 1968,
Romania’s population had increased by nearly 100%.
It also didn’t help that Communist Romania faced a debt crisis during the 1980s
that reduced the standard of living drastically. Families were forced into
overcrowded apartments without heating or adequate food. Orphanages became
bloated, nightmarish hells full of starving unwanted children. Even long after
Ceausescu was thrown out of power, his idiotic pronatalist policies could be
seen in the Romania’s overcrowded orphanages, prisons, and mental asylums.
The failure of these policies stands
as testament to the ineffectiveness of central-planned economies and of
collectivism in general. Outlawing all forms of birth control has the tendency
to make birth rates explode, but in the poverty of communist Romania, such high
birth rates could not be sustained. How his country was going to accommodate
all the children being born under these policies, Ceausescu likely did not take
into account. I believe such negligence is characteristic of most laws passed
by other socialist regimes.
3. Massacre of Innocents in Cambodia
Cambodia was subjected to the brutal dictatorship of Pol Pot and
the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979. Pol Pot rose to power following the
escalation of American bombing campaigns during the Vietnam War. In 1970s, American
bombings had spilled over into Cambodia, galvanizing hatred towards to west and
an embrace of The Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot’s anti-imperialist rhetoric. Pol
Pot’s dictatorship was marked by mass killings, starvations, imprisonments, and
torture. The dictator’s wrath was mostly directed at racial minorities such as
Chinese and Vietnamese, as well as intellectuals, of whom Pol Pot was
distrustful. Others who were targeted for killing included businessmen, artists,
professionals, Buddhist monks, former government employees, and anybody accused
of “economic sabotage.” Most victims of the regime were not shot, but were
beaten to death savagely with tools such as shovels and pickaxes in order to save
bullets.
All this bloodshed was an effort by Pol Pot’s communist government to establish
a radical agrarian socialism, where former city-dwellers were forced to work in
the fields for long hours each day. For those who dared criticize the regime, prisons
such as Tuol Sleng were established
where inmates would be starved and brutally tortured for months before being
executed. Estimates range about how many were killed by The Khmer Rouge, but
the figure is generally accepted to be in the millions, possibly as high as three
million. The
systematic effort by the Khmer Rouge to murder its own people goes to show the
true face of socialism. As with most collectivist states that commit genocide,
most of those executed are innocent—their lives completely disposable,
extinguished on a whim by a sociopathic dictator. So many of those who were
exterminated were intelligent and productive people, and would have worked to
make the world a better place had their lives not been wasted in the pursuit of
a twisted socialist utopia.
2. North Korea
"This isn't my hair-dryer!"
The Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea is such an exhibition of bureaucratic incompetence and human cruelty that
it would be difficult to pick one single blunder for this list. Since its
official establishment in 1948 DPRK has run up a laundry list human right
abuses. Economic mismanagement caused a massive famine between 1994 and 1998 in
which 3 million people died. Even today, long after the famine officially
ended, food is still scarce throughout the country—especially in the
countryside. Peasants regularly starve to death in the hundreds. In 2013, the
UN estimated that 84 percent of the country had “poor” levels of food
consumption. Meanwhile, the current dictator of DPRK, Kim Jong-Un does not want
for anything; in 2012 alone, he spent nearly 7 million dollars on goods like
handbags, luxury watches, cosmetics, and alcohol. In that same year, he also
spent 1.3 billion dollars on ballistic missile programs.
The North Korean Army, which is the fourth largest in the world, has an annual
budget of 6 billion dollars.
The most appalling side of North
Korea is not its gross economic mismanagement, but its unsympathetic brutality
towards its populace. Those who have escaped the many prison camps throughout the
country testify to acts of extreme cruelty and barbarity. Inmates in these
prisons face constant threats of arbitrary beatings and executions by the
guards, who reportedly enjoy torturing inmates with cattle prods. Women are
regularly raped and given forced abortions.
The number of political prisoners within North Korea has grown dramatically
over the past five years, with an estimated quarter million imprisoned in 2011.
Considering the North Korean government does not release statistics to this
effect leads one to wonder how much abuse is happening in the country that we
don’t even know about yet.
Such a disgraceful track record of abuse
as that of DPRK is not uncommon for most other collectivist countries on this
list. DPRK is but a single entry in the long list of failed socialist states.
It is a sad reflection on the mental development of the west that some delinquents still apologize for the crimes of this regime.
1. The Great Purges
Decapitate USSR
Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a prominent victim of the Great Purges.
Josef Stalin was paranoid of everyone.
As dictator of the Soviet Union, he saw enemies wherever he looked for them:
among his friends, family, the army, the intelligentsia, fellow party members,
and acquaintances. Stalin began his purges in 1936, seeking to eliminate the
Old Bolsheviks who fought in the Russian Civil War as well as any political
rivals, but as the purges progressed, individuals from all facets of society
became targets. Nobody was safe. Ninety percent of Red Army officers were purged,
including three out of five Marshals, thirteen out of fifteen army commanders,
and all sixteen army commissars.
Many talented commanders like Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Alexander Yegrov, Iona
Yakir, and Vitaly Primakov were all put to death. Prominent journalists,
writers, politicians, engineers, and architects were also killed or imprisoned.
All in all, declassified Soviet documents reveal that 681, 692 people were
killed from 1937-1938—an average of one thousand executions a day.
Many more were arrested and died later in the gulags.
The needless loss of so many Russian
intellectuals and leaders meant that the Soviet Union was wholly unprepared to
deal with the German invasion of 1941. Stalin’s purges had effectively
decapitated the Red Army of all its best officers. Even the Soviet military
doctrine which was written by Tukhachevsky, was replaced by a crude, and wholly
ineffective one written by Kliment Voroshilov, a diehard Stalinist. Many of the
tragic disasters on the eastern front during the early years of the war such as
Smolensk (1941) and Kerch (1942) occurred as a direct result of the lack of
well-trained, experienced Soviet officers.
Those who are sympathetic to Soviet
Russia laud the will of the communists to resist and ultimately beat back the
Nazi invasion. However, the reason why the Germans had such success against the
Russians in the early stages of Operation Barbarossa was due to the unfit state of the Red Army to
repel such an invasion. Stalin’s purges had consolidated his hold over the country
and eliminated any opposition, but they were ultimately wasteful and
unproductive. The Purges also indirectly led to millions of Russians being needlessly
slaughtered during World War Two.
James Lucas, War on the Eastern Front: The German Soldier
in Russia 1941-1945
