Capitalism: The Purest Form of Freedom

Americans are easy prey when it comes to political distraction debates. The NLRB’s outrageous attempt to block Boeing from opening a new plant in South Carolina is a distraction. Proposed card-check legislation is a distraction. Our obsessive meddling in Middle Eastern countries is a distraction.

All these are important issues, but they are merely subcategories of the foundational issue that Americans should be focused on: loss of freedom. In a truly free society, none of these issues would even arise, because they are outside the scope of human freedom.

Unfortunately, instead of freedom, we are being cleverly engineered into social-justice automatons by left-wing zealots who run Atlas Shrug-like bureaucracies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Department of Education, to name but a few of our worst enemies from within.

The antithesis of freedom is communism. Karl Marx and his lackey benefactor, Friedrich Engels, firmly believed that violent revolution was the only way to bring about pure communism, and that such a revolution was possible only where capitalism existed. Capitalism, they insisted, was a necessary ingredient for creating a wide financial disparity between workers and the privileged class.

I’m still baffled as to why Marx and Engels would want to increase the income disparity between the classes, only to rectify the disparity through violent revolution. Sounds like angry, left-wing mischievousness to me. Perhaps it was based on their knowledge of the utter failure of the French Revolution, which had led only to mob violence, unthinkable human carnage, and, ultimately, a Napoleonic dictatorship.

But the fact is that there has never been a communist revolutionary threat in capitalistic societies such as Japan, Taiwan, or (pre-China) Hong Kong. The most notable communist revolutions have occurred in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba, none of which could have been considered capitalist countries at the time. Thus, Marx and Engels would have considered the United States to be a perfect crucible for testing their convoluted class-warfare theories.

Of course, only naïve dreamers believe in the communist fairly tale that under communism, the state will eventually “wither away” because there will be so much of everything for everybody that government will no longer be necessary. But I do believe that Marx and Engels were on to something with their belief that socialism would precede communism. In fact, they referred to socialism as a “transitional stage of society” between capitalism and communism.

Nevertheless, here in the U.S. we have long suffered from the delusion that “European-style socialism” is a nice, peaceful, cradle-to-grave compromise between capitalism and communism. Elitists on both the right and the left have come to believe that European society is static, and that so long as European countries keep their redistribution-of-wealth policies finely tuned, capitalists will go right on producing enough to support the parasitic masses.

What they have not taken into account, however, is a crucial factor known as human nature. Homo sapiens — particularly its progressive subspecies — is, by nature, an avaricious creature. Worse, the more goods and services he acquires without work, the more avaricious he becomes. In fact, the human appetite for wealth without work is insatiable.

The result is that when producers can no longer create enough wealth to appease the voracious appetites of the masses, those on the receiving end become increasingly upset. Which is why the riots we’ve witnessed in Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy are not mysterious events. On the contrary, they were predictable decades ago.

If a man has spent his whole life believing it is his right to retire at age fifty-eight, and someone else’s obligation to support him in his retirement in the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed, he is incapable of comprehending that he must work until — Gasp! — age sixty.

It was just as predictable that rioting would come to the United States. Madison, Indianapolis, Columbus, and other state capitals are but a mild preview of what the U.S. can expect once the invisible depression becomes visible even to those who are still in a Keynesian coma.

With the coming debt-ceiling increase, no cutbacks in store for Social Security or Medicare, and a majority of politicians unwilling to make serious spending cuts in other unconstitutional, redistribution-of-wealth programs, my view of what’s on the near horizon is pretty clear. I see the (admitted) unemployment rate at 25 percent or more, housing prices collapsing at least another 50 percent, the DJIA free-falling several thousands points in a single day, and inflation rising to 30 percent, 40 percent, or perhaps even higher.

All of which would set the stage for the cherished uprising that Marx and Engels so passionately longed for — and that Barack Obama and his Marxist pals believe they are near to achieving. The reason the United States has been able to avoid violent revolution until now is because even through the eras of the most left-leaning presidents and Congresses of the past hundred years, there was always enough pushback to keep capitalism alive. But that pushback has been rapidly declining, and is now coming from only 50 percent or less of the population.

There’s an irony in the fact that Marx and Engels believed capitalism was necessary in order to create more wealth disparity. The irony I’m referring to is that capitalism also creates more wealth for those on the lowest rung of the income ladder than any other system, so income and wealth disparities, while interesting phenomena for academic eggheads to ponder, are irrelevant. The only thing that’s relevant is how well off each individual is in absolute terms — not in comparison to others.

The bottom line is that without capitalism, there is no such thing as prosperity for the masses. Capitalism is freedom in its purest form. Thus, without freedom, capitalism, by definition, cannot exist, because it is nothing more than a subcategory of freedom — the freedom to trade one’s goods and services with others without interference from government.

If you agree with most of what I’ve said in this article, you should make it a point to vote only for those office seekers whom you are convinced truly understand that the main threat we face is our loss of freedom. My pessimistic vision of the future would change substantially if pro-freedom types were able to win the presidency and overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress in 2012. The optimistic side of me hopes it will happen, but my realistic side keeps reminding me that history has not been kind to those who put their trust in politicians.

Spread the word, avoid distractions, and keep it simple: We are losing our freedom!