In the last piece, I made it clear that communism or socialism has been part of the human consciousness for millennia. Despite its copious failures over the past two centuries in whichever place that it has been practiced, it still has wonderful appeal to contemporary minds. They still believe that the mistakes of the past can be avoided and communism or socialism can be made good. I have to state categorically clear, without any reservation, that anybody who still believes in the utopian world of socialism or communism is a fantasist. He lives in a parallel world of illusions; and, as far as I am concerned, he is a dangerous person to the living, though he might think otherwise.
For anybody who is still struggling to free himself from this diseased ideology I will entreat him to read an essay entitled, ‘The tragedy of the commons’ by Garrett Hardin. For those who are interested it is easily available on the net. The central thesis of Hardin’s argument is that, freedom in the commons brings ruin to all. And he specifically took a swipe at the welfare state that provides for children encouraging over-breeding. And I can testify that here in Britain, the families who give birth in the range of six to twelve children are mostly on welfare. Though there have been serious critics of the Hardin’s position their solutions mainly dwell on the cooperative option, which quite recently sustained a terrible blast across the bow. In 2013, Paul Flowers, the former chairman of the Co-operative Bank, resigned days before a £1.5bn capital shortfall was revealed in the company’s accounts. You would think that the people who believe such romantic perception of the world will be squeaky clean, but their hypocrisy will shame an alley cat.
It is very strange that they give those blessed with paragon of beauty the pass when they make obscene fortune from the beauty industry. The same thing applies to footballers like David Beckham who has made millions and continues to attract massive advertising endorsement. Tiger Woods has made a billion dollar fortune for just hitting a piece of golf ball. The visceral hatred that these people have for the capitalist is given a stay of execution when it comes to some of the people I have mentioned who sometimes make more money than the capitalist they wouldn’t hesitate to disembowel. However, a capitalist who uses his brains to come up with an idea and employing his own capital is perceived differently. Sometimes the capital is even borrowed from a bank with collateral furnished by a family member, perhaps, with his own credibility cultivated over years of thrift, honesty and initial deprivation. Why is it the capitalist who is always at the receiving end of their jealous anger?
In their childish world of reasoning they often ask dull questions such as why should a dentist be paid so much more than his secretary? I would say the school of dentistry is open to all; that is, if they can bring their mental faculty to cope with the rigorousness of the studies. While they rationalise, I wouldn’t even mention the number of years they spend in school acquiring their skills, which is an investment that needs to pay off in future. Besides, they forget the fact that the dentist might not even earn anything in the first year of operation, because of the meagre base of his clientele while the secretary gets paid every month. However, when his reputation grows and his client base expands and starts making huge profit, some socialist hack will forget the days when he agonised whether his practice was going to survive. They forget how he fretted over the service of the loans he secured at great risk to start his business.
In Mr Kwarteng’s article under discussion, he said I should find out how much the Cuban government contributes to each Cuban medical bill, accommodation, food and education and what have you. In my whole entire adult life I have not seen any dumb question like that before. Even a 12 year old who has mastered a subject will not ask such a silly question. It lacked thoughtfulness, and deep understanding of the discourse, which I can only equate it to an innocent smart prepubescent hungry for knowledge. If the Cuban government appropriates the productivity of the country, shouldn’t it be her responsibility to provide all those things. If a medical practitioner with multiple skills takes home $67 a month, don’t you think the government should help them if they have to save and buy a car costing $93,000? I think the Cuban government should not just subsidise, but provide them for free.
In the first paragraph I made a statement to the effect that those who romanticise about communism wield an unbridled belief, and sometimes even stubborn faith, regardless of the infinite bad record of that ridiculous system. The lame excuse they always give, and perhaps an escape hatch is that the measures adopted, or the implementation did not go far enough. When Pol Pot was told about the atrocities and the inadequacies of the Chinese communism he quipped, the Chinese did not know how to practice communism. Of course, providence gave him the chance to show the world how to practice communism, and it wasn’t very good.
All the silly major wars that were fought after the WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, the invasion of Afghanistan, Grenada etc. was a result of this stupid communist ideology. Khrushchev once stated that it has been proven scientifically that communism is the way of the future so he had plans to bury capitalist America. And where is Khrushchev’s scientific communism of the future? It collapsed like a house of cards. Is it because America is materialistic and property grabbing?
The notion that acquired property can be transferred is what energise or motivate some people to work hard even when they have passed their active productive years. I personally work hard, because I know I can bequeath my assets to my children. And through that invincible drive, my productivity benefits others.
His prediction that communist everywhere will behave like brothers, or for better word comrades, fell flat not too long after his death. What happened during the First World War was the first shot across the bow of his silly and idiotic predictions. All the proletariat gravitated towards their governments. And when the Chinese fought the Vietnamese, which should have sounded the death knell of his profession as a prophet his believers still hold him high as the infallible Marx. The clashes between communist China and Russia was rather dangerous because Russia was nuclear armed, and anything could have happened. He said communism will supplant capitalism, and everything shall be like the lamb playing happily with the tiger. They had the chance in Russia, and they managed to spread their evil ideology to Western Europe after the chaos of the Second World War. Unfortunately, it did not produce anything like the wolf and the lamb of Isaiah 11:6; rather, the rotten edifice collapsed like a controlled demolition.
He made bogus assertion that the Soviet Union produced a lot of Nobel Prize winners, which is very true. But the reality is the Russian have been very good story tellers long before the Bolsheviks came along. One of my favourite writers is Dostoyevsky. I literally cannot have enough of his classics, and he wrote long before the evils of communism took over the imagination of the Russians. I first heard about Leo Tolstoy long before I got to my teens. His famous work ‘War and Peace’ was written a year before the birth of that butcher called Vladimir Lenin. So I am really surprised that Mr Kwarteng will make such a cheap swipe. And my question is did he ever consider the road not taken? During the time of Hitler, there were a lot of scientists who did wonders for his military effort. But think about those who left to help the Allied effort that finally produced the atomic bomb. Just think about Igor Sikorsky who left Russia in 1919 to America. This man designed and flew the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300, the first viable helicopter. All of Igor’s talent and ideas benefited the Americans instead of Russia. Igor Sikorsky encapsulates my notion of the road not taken.
And one of the most childish comments he made about J. K. Rowling is what obliterated any respect that I have for him. He wrote, ‘Is it not ironic that some Russian writers under communism received the Nobel Prize in Literature while J.K. Rowling has not received one yet.’ It is in direct responds to what I wrote in one of my earlier articles about Joseph Proudon’s assertion that property is theft. As much as I don’t have any use for J. K. Rowling’s work, because I think her books are for people without imagination. But it has made her a multimillionaire, probably billionaire by now. And there is no way anybody can claim that her wealth was stolen according to the beliefs of Proudhon. Capitalism is about producing what the people want, and if by chance you get the Nobel Prize that becomes the icing on the cake. The most important thing is about making a decent living. What is the point in winning a Nobel Prize when you still scratch for a living? I will prefer the trappings of capitalism. I will put a question to Mr Kwarteng since he loves such dull questions. How many people read those Russian Nobel Prize winners? J. K Rowling has sold over 400 million copies, which has not been matched in history, and also won multiple awards since he so much fascinated about awards. Her book series, which has been made into films, became also the highest-grossing film series in history. How does this compare to the puny Nobel Prize he is talking about?
And he throws one of his dreary begging questions around, ‘Why does he fault Keynes and Marx but leave the classical economists alone? Why does he make too much of Marx’s faulty underlying reasons for his ideas, at least as expressed in Marx’s first volume? Does Marxism have all the answers?’ It appears Mr Kwarteng suffers from acute irreparable astigmatism when I have repeated several times that capitalism is not perfect; it doesn’t claim that distinction. It is the Marxists who claim they have discovered a scientific way of curing all humanities problems. Marx stated categorically in his ‘Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844’ that communism is the riddle of history solved. Yet, it aggravated everything it touched with savage brutality that does not befit the moralities of civilised societies. So the burden of proof hangs on their neck like a thousand pound millstone. I will state again that capitalism does not have all the answers, because it does not seek to create a perfect society. If, for instance, we live in a society that a vagrant is able to murder his own parents, how do you expect society to conform to a single belief when there is such a misfit around?
In Proudhon’s Philosophy of Poverty, he argued that employers have no function, and perhaps there might be some resonance during the 19th century. Can anybody tell me that the employer who provides employment conjures his factory from the sky without thinking, strategising, planning and even deciding the best place to locate his factory? Nothing could be more childish than this. And these are the silly ideas these socialist feed on intellectually.
Thank you once more.
Philip Kobina Baidoo Jnr
London
baidoo_philip@yahoo.co.uk
