The Fruits of Socialism
Socialism — the systematic dilution of private property rights and free enterprise by government — has become, in widely varying degrees, the order of the day in most of the world. The entirety of Africa is socialist, and so, with the exceptions of the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, and perhaps several other of the East Asian “dragons,” is Asia. Communist China, with its enclaves of capitalism in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and certain other cities benefiting from the willingness of Western factories to take advantage of local cheap labor, might appear to be a glaring exception, but life for hundreds of millions of Chinese living outside such privileged enclaves is as impoverished as ever, even if no longer as severe as under Chairman Mao and his fanatical socialist shock troops.
Europe is socialist, too — more so perhaps in the eurozone than elsewhere — and nowhere in Europe, save perhaps in Switzerland and a few tiny free market havens such as Andorra and Malta, can the economic system be characterized as other than socialist. Unfortunately, much the same can be said of the New World, with significant degrees of economic freedom and opportunity remaining only in Canada, the United States, and Chile, although all three of those countries also have a strong socialistic bent. It is probably no exaggeration to say that the closest thing to free market enclaves remaining in the world are to be found in the East Asian “dragons,” especially Singapore; in the United Arab Emirates, particularly magnificent Dubai; and in the various microstate tax havens in Europe, such as Andorra, Monaco, and Liechtenstein.
Because many modern socialist countries have not reached the extreme circumstances of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, Germany under the Nazis, or the former Soviet Union and its many client states behind the Iron Curtain, it is tempting to dismiss a “little” socialism as a vexing but harmless inconvenience. To those of us living under varying degrees of European “democratic socialism” or its close kin, American “progressivism,” socialism can even appear to be benign, because post-Cold War socialism is not (yet) as totalitarian as the Stalinist regimes of the former Eastern Bloc and Mao’s Communist China. There are exceptions, of course: Cuba remains a bastion of old-style Stalinism, Venezuela now appears to be following Cuba into the socialist abyss, and North Korea is probably the most totalitarian socialist hell on Earth still in existence.
JBS Member or ShopJBS.org Customer?
Sign in with your ShopJBS.org account username and password or use that login to subscribe.
Subscribe Now
- 24 Issues Per Year
- Digital Edition Access
- Exclusive Subscriber Content
- Audio provided for all articles
- Unlimited access to past issues
- Cancel anytime.
- Renews automatically
Subscribe Now
- 24 Issues Per Year
- Print edition delivery (USA)
*Available Outside USA - Digital Edition Access
- Exclusive Subscriber Content
- Audio provided for all articles
- Unlimited access to past issues
- Cancel anytime.
- Renews automatically