From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!CAD:ucbesvax!turner
Newsgroups: net.politics
Title: Re: what IS wrong with socialism - (nf)
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.692
Posted: Wed Feb 23 17:43:16 1983
Received: Thu Feb 24 21:00:42 1983

#N:ucbesvax:7100002:000:7634
ucbesvax!turner    Feb 21 17:05:00 1983

	Oh, Ziggy, here you go again:

	    The best argument for this position [anti-socialist] skips over
	    the never ending theoretical debates on political systems and
	    looks at the fact of the matter in the world today: Socialist
	    countries are the least free, the most oppressive, and the most
	    imperialistic in the world today.
    
	I can make an argument against socialism that doesn't make reference
    to this "fact of the matter," but I'll save it for later.  I'd rather
    get into this so-called fact.  Here, taken from your note, is a hierarchy
    of evil as measured in terms of human rights abuses.

	worst:		certain "unaligned" socialist countries
	2nd worst:	 Comecon countries
	best:		"capitalist" or mixed-economy OECD - which are
			"paradises of civil liberties and economic
			opportunities."
	
	Of course, there are a few trifling ommisions from this attempt
    at a comprehensive list:  South Korea, South Africa, Indonesia, the
    Philipines, Pakistan, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Brazil, Argentina, Chile,
    Paraguay, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Haiti, among others.

	Now compare these with those in your "worst" list.  Using the
    best available figures (and I think Amnesty International does a good
    job on all counts, including ther Commmunist countries), we find that,
    perhaps Kampuchea and Vietnam compare with some of the worst, but
    by and large, the situation in "unaligned" socialist countries (say,
    Cuba or Yugoslavia) is not one where people are being randomly murdered
    and whole villages being wiped out. 

	Now look at the economic systems in these countries.  By and large,
    you might have some state-owned sectors (Oil, for example), but for
    the most part, they are "capitalist".  So it would seem that there
    isn't much relation between basic freedoms and economic systems.
    (Obviously, I hold the right to live regardless of one's beliefs to be
    more basic than any economic rights.  You, Ziggy, may object, saying in
    your dogmatic way that when we lose THOSE rights, we automatically lose
    the right to life.  But look again at that list.)

	Well, what IS the most common factor in THIS list of human-rights
    violators?  Barring some obvious cases (Iran, for example, which is
    as bad or worse than before), the common element is that they all
    have as a central economic policy the encouragement of investment on
    the part of the capitalist "paradise" countries.  Another common element
    is the presence of U.S. aid to police and armed forces, except where
    the disgust of U.S. congress (or its constituencies) has barred this
    sort of aid.

	How is this aid used?  Quite frequently, to prevent people from
    exercising an economic right which even you, Ziggy, would have to
    grudgingly admit is inalienable: the right of workers to collectively
    and freely bargain with their employers over issues of pay and control.
    That is, the right to sell one's own labor under the best possible
    conditions one can obtain.  Yes, even as Alexander Haig wept crocodile
    tears over the military crackdown on Solidarity and the detainment of
    Lech Walesa, he was renegotiating aid to Turkey and Brazil, where labor
    leaders of Walesa's prominence are shot in the streets without
    judgement or trial.  Note that Lech Walesa is now back on the streets,
    without a job, but getting his full electrician's pay.  Not to argue
    for the Polish generals, but they do seem to know how to handle the
    population better than some of the dictators propped up in the U.S.
    sphere of influence!

	And how does the suppression of this economic right to organize
    a workplace serve American interests to the extent of the aid given?
    Or does it, ultimately?  In the short run, of course, people in the
    U.S. and other "capitalist paradises" win out: they can buy commodities
    which were "fabricated" in the  countries at much lower
    prices.  Labor that would cost 5$/hour here might cost $5/day over there.
    But this discount is gained at the real expense of the life and liberty,
    of the people who work in  countries.  But then Marxist
    revolutionary comes around and says: it doesn't have to be this way.
    And what do they do?  Ziggy, what would YOU do?  With your younger
    children not eating, your older children in jail, getting paid less
    each year in real income?

	How else is this clout used?  In many of the  countries,
    we find the left-overs of feudalism of the former colonizers.  The
    economy is largely agrarian and impoverished, with some very wealthy
    people at the top who have inherited their positions.  (Or, at least,
    were the local mafia until the client state - France, Britain, the U.S. -
    decided that the old feudal lords were too soft and installed these
    crooks.  This is what happened in VietNam.  Read "The Politics of Heroin
    in South-East Asia.") Large foreign agribusiness concerns come into these
    countries and help erect farming systems which squeeze the marginal
    peasant populations off their land.  The governments are basically their
    paid gun-men.  The large-scale graft networks of United Fruit in Guatemala
    is a prime example of this strategy.  Former small land-owners fall prey
    to much larger ones backed by troops, and end up as peons with no homes,
    no rights, and less than they had before.

	But you would summarize socialism to these people as follows:

	    In other words succesful socialism is the tyranny of the many
	    over the individual, and most socialism in practice is just
	    plain tyranny.
	
	Not very persuasive, though, if you have lived under the tyranny of
    the very many by the very few, is it?  But this is what goes on in the
     countries.  And who benefits from this?  The "capitalist
    paradises".  And would THEY change it?  No, because they

	    ...just know what they like, and they don't like the Gov'mint
	    telling them what to do.
    
	Right.  The Gov'mint can tell the  countries what to do,
    but not us, who are getting fat on those police-states.  THAT's not
    your vaunted free enterprise, now is it?

	Well, just drop me a line the next time you want to skip over some
    never-ending debates on political systems and go straight to the
    real evidence.  I might save you some embarassment.

[Entering Confession Mode:]

	Hey, Ziggy, listen: I was once a Libertarian hard-liner.  No wait!
    come back!  It's true!  I read Ayn Rand when I was thirteen, and it took
    me a decade to get self-deprogrammed.  I'm serious.  It took me 10 years
    to become disillusioned with laissez-faire capitalism.  If the world were
    already pretty straightened out (i.e., approximate equality of nations,
    or no nations at all and equality of people) it might be a great idea.
    But it is not the one true answer to all the world's problems.  Especially
    if it blinds you to what the world's problems really are, which is what
    it did to me.  Capitalism imposed at gun-point is no better than Communism
    at gun-point.

	Equally seriously: I'm grateful that I was a Libertarian.  It
    means that I can stand up to doctrinaire socialists (and there's a lot
    of 'em in Berkeley) with the reasons why THEY are full of shit.  My
    view of the ideal society is, I think, closer to yours than theirs.
    But you'll have to shed some illusions and do some reading before we
    can really talk.

	My Last Flame at You (I Promise!)
	    Michael Turner