Socialists & The Poor
A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
-- Vladimir Lenin
All Socialist propaganda focuses on selling to the poor the idea that if you supported them, they will make everybody equal. To create this equality we need to hand over power and control to the Socialists politicians, and they will do what is best for everyone.
The rise to power of a Socialist government is always given to them by the poor masses. Based on the promises of a better life where everybody gets everything they need for free. To make this equal society Socialists propose they will take it from the rich, through the removal of private property ownership.
No Socialist government has ever delivered on this promise. Instead, the lives of the people under Socialist control are universally much worse, including the poor and vulnerable. The promises made by Socialists, are based on lies and manipulations to grab and control power.
Seeing Through The Sales Pitch
To understand Socialism all you need to do is take the sales pitch and ask yourself, what is the opposite of what they are saying, and then you will get to the result of Socialism.
Socialist promise equality, what the people get is extreme inequality as the government executive and political elite becomes exceptionally wealthy and powerful, while the rest of the country becomes very poor and disempowered.
Socialist promise a better life for all, what the people get is complete state dependency where the people rely on the government for everything they need. Then the government gives them just enough to survive, leaving the people worse off than before Socialist rule, but now powerless to improve their lives.
Socialist promises to make everyone equal by changing laws. Constitutional human rights give everyone common and equal rights regardless of birth and by changing laws and constitutions they remove common human rights reducing equality.
The Birth Of Socialism
Karl Marx lived in Europe from 1818 to 1883 and was the author of several books and articles. He partnered up with Friedrich Engels who lived from 1820 to 1895 and came from a wealthy family. Marx used Engels family money to promote their ideas. Marx wanted to challenge the system that he was born into and promoted the destruction of classes or any form of hierarchy in society. In its place, he suggested worker lead shared ownerships and called it Socialism.
Vladimir Lenin who lived in Eastern Europe from 1870 to 1924 embraced revolutionary Socialist politics following his brother's execution in 1887. 34 years after the death of Marx. Lenin used the ideas of Marx to lead a violent revolution that became known as the February Revolution leading to a one-party state governed by the Russian Communist Party, lead by Lenin.
Russia at the time had many social and economic issues with World War 1 aggravating and compounding Russia's problems. Lenin used this discontent of the people in his favour to get the support of the people. During the February Revolution Tsar Nicholas II, head of the Romanov royal family under pressure abdicated ending 196 years of rule of the Russian Empire.
On 17 July 1918, the entire royal family were woken, lead into a basement and were violently executed. They were shot and stabbed with bayonets, including the Tsar's youngest daughter Anastasia. There were many rumours of Anastasia's survival, leading to many books, musicals and films.
With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, most of the royal family's remains were recovered. In 2007 the last remaining bodies of the royal family were found, and DNA evidence proved that Anastasia did not survive, and died with her family on that horrific night in 1918.
The combination of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels writings provided the ideas and ideology of Socialism, and then the actions of Vladimir Lenin gave birth to Socialism. Together they are the fathers of Socialism.
Marxism And All The Ism's
One of the reasons Socialism has been so successful has been the number of Socialist writings. All the well-known dictators of Socialist governments have also written about Socialism. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Lenin have all authored something on the topic with many more lesser-known promoters also writing and building on the socialist ideology.
This lead to the rise of all the Socialist "Ism's", with many of the famous authors having their version of Socialism named after them as an Ism. When people talk about Lenin's take on Socialism they are talking about Leninism, and the same is true for Maoism and Stalinism.
Marxism is a term used to describe Marx own writings and to describe or refer to all Socialist ideology as a group under one name. If somebody describes themselves as a Marxist they believe in Socialism, following the general principles and ideology that started with Karl Marx.
Outdated Ideology
When reviewing any Socialist ideas, it is important to put into context the time it was written, and where in the world the author lived. Many of the ideas promoted by Marx are not relevant today or make no sense at all as the world today is a fundamentally different place.
People
In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation.
The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.
-- Leon Trotsky
When Karl Marx was alive, the idea that people should have any rights was a very new concept. Even the basic fundamental human rights like the right to life that is common in most free Democracies today did not exist then. This comes out in his writing as he focuses on the rights of the workers in Capitalist businesses. In the 1800s workers had little to no rights and fair pay and treatment were not part of any laws.
Today the world is a different place, at the start of the 1800 world poverty levels were at 81%, with most of the world considered poor. Fast forward to today with world poverty levels below 10%. This is often cited as "nothing short of a miracle", but what makes it even more incredible is that the world population in 1800 was 1 Billion people and today we are 7.8 Billion people. So even with a 700% increase in people, global poverty is fast approaching the point where people are talking about the complete elimination of global poverty.
Every Democracy with a free market economy today has human rights and workers rights as part of the countries laws and constitution. People quality of life living in democratic countries has improved dramatically. Most of the Socialist sales pitch is based on a world that does not exist anymore.
Agriculture
Food security was a considerable challenge 200 years ago with staving to death being a real possibility for many. We see this coming out in many Socialist ideas with a strong focus on agriculture and farming. The Socialist form of agriculture is where all land would be owned by the state, and be distributed amongst the peasants forming many smallholdings.
This lead to some odd ideas, such as every farmer should be given a few hectares of land, and every farmer would be required to have a minimum of one dairy cow. These peasant farms would then form part of a social collective in the form of group farming.
You can see where these ideas would have come from 200 years ago, but today farming has become a very specialised large scale industry requiring specialised skills and machinery to help feed the 7.8 billion people of the world.
The Socialist idea of farming also does not take into account the rapid and large scale urbanisation of the world. The large majority of the world today live in fast-growing urban towns and cities, not rural farmland. The idea that we would now take millions of people out of the cities into the rural areas and give them a small piece of land and forcing them to farm is not realistic, and would not be sufficient to produce the amount of food required to feed almost 8 billion people.
Unnatural Systems
Competition is something that occurs throughout nature in all-natural systems through competing for resources and a mate. We can visually see this in birds species with male birds being often very colourful and females very plain to blend into the surroundings. In New Guinea and Southern Australia, there is a group of birds called Bird-of-paradise and the males are some of the most extravagant and beautiful birds in the world that take competing for a mate to the extreme. Competition is hard-coded into the DNA of every living thing, including people.
All of nature competes for resources, and this creates a balance and reason for existing. With people, competition drives innovation and growth in technology. Through competition, there is also a natural balancing that takes place where nothing exists unless there is a need for it. Any business or idea that there is no need for does not last long, keeping the system balanced. In this system, the hardest working people willing to take risks will succeed more than the people that are not willing to put in the effort or take risks.
Socialism at every level creates unnatural systems that go against nature and the natural systems of competition. In a Socialist state, hard work and effort have no meaning because no matter how hard you work your life will not change. You will get the same amount of money and food. Everything in your life is 100% dependant on the state, you have no control over your own life.
The unnatural system of Socialism has led to large amounts of wasteful spending and the creation of things that naturally should not exist or there is no need for. From factories with no clients to buildings with no people to live in. Socialism is one of the most costly and wasteful system mankind has ever invented because it distorts reality.
A truly astounding example of this exists in China's ghost cities. In China today there are entire cities, buildings, shops and even entertainment facilities and nobody lives there. But there is not just one or two of these cities, current estimates put it at over 50 municipalities that exist but have no people.
Tools Of Socialism
Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.
-- Joseph Stalin
Creating and maintaining an unnatural system like Socialism requires some special tools and tactics because the system does not naturally maintain itself as it is an unnatural and unsustainable system.
Socialism is a system designed to control people and everything in that system is about controlling the people that live in the system.
In the beginning peoples rights are removed in the form of private property rights and the control of freedom of movement. Often these early stages are violent because as soon as the people realize what the government is trying to do they protest, and the people are beaten back into conformity through violence and fear.
One of the most powerful tools of Socialism is propaganda and the flow of information and the media. Socialist leading up to a planned revolutionary takeover will spread a large amount of false information creating conflict between groups and blowing up issues to benefit them. Making them seem to have more support than they really have and distorting facts to confuse the public.
Following the take-over, all information is controlled and censored. An extreme example of this is how in Venezuela there can be one of the largest protests the country has ever seen, leading to violent clashes with the government. However, the news that same night will not report on it, it's not even mentioned, as if it never happened.
People living in a Socialist state fight back and try to take control back from the government, leading to the true face of Socialism starting to show itself. With fear and violence used to keep the people in line.
If you speak out or oppose the government you might find yourself arrested on false charges and while in prison beaten and tortured, and sometimes that person is never seen again. Out of fear of attracting governments attention, most people agree and do not oppose the government.
Ultimate Creator Of Inequality
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
-- Sir John Dalberg-Acton
The promise of Socialism that is advertised and sold to the general public is equality. Telling the people they are going to make everybody equal, and they will take from the rich to give to the poor and make the poor equal. The reality is very different as this is a complete lie as their motives are power, wealth and control for themselves.
The creation of a Socialist state requires giving one political party incredible power centralized in the hands of just a few because in a Socialist state the government and leaders of that government control everything.
This leads to the haves and have nots being the political elite and the rest of the country. Instead of making everybody equal Socialism creates extreme inequality where the dictators in control amass incredible wealth, while the people are starving and suffering.
We can see an example of this extreme inequality in the Soviet Union healthcare systems. The people had to endure one of the worst state-controlled healthcare systems ever. It was free and available to everybody, but people would rather sneak into a neighbouring country and pay for healthcare than risk using the state-provided healthcare system. In contrast, if you were a member of the governing party and worked in the highest levels of government, you would use a completely different second healthcare system created just for the few at the top.
Poverty Creation
As a Socialist state is an unnatural system, over time that system degrades and the people living in that systems lives steadily gets worse. The state will suck up resources and money in the form of expropriation and nationalisation of businesses and industries, and slowly over time, there is less and less money in the system as all concepts of value is undermined or destroyed.
As corruption grows in a Socialist state, the extreme inequality and lack of money in the system means there is less available for the general public. More and more of the available resources get sucked up by the political elite to maintain their lifestyles, while the people's lives get worse and suffer more and more.
This slow decay of the system and the people's lives creates more poverty over time. In a world where most Democratic and free-market economies are reducing poverty, Socialism is creating poverty. When you look at the poverty in the World and where it is, we see that Socialism is one of the greatest creators of poverty this world has ever seen.
This creation of poverty is best seen in Africa as the creation of dictators through Socialism has held back the entire continent for decades. In countries that were once growing and adopted Socialism, very quickly started to go backwards. Migrating their population back into poverty, undoing any progress.
The Party Is The Government
Socialist governments will often call themselves by some democratic sounding name, "The Peoples Republic of" or "The Democratic Republic of". This is just missinformation and part of the lie as they try to act and seem like a Democratic government with Democratic processes. All this is just a facade covering up a dictatorship.
When a Socialist state is forming the government and the ruling party merge into a single entity and over time there is little difference between the party and the government. The party will start to feed off the state and grow until it takes over everything.
We can see how this plays out with a single government and leadership running a country for decades regardless of their performance. They will pretend to have elections and play out some sort of Democratic charade, but the result is the same and the same people continue to rule for decades.
The Poor Give Power & Suffer
Socialism needs poverty and conflict to form and get started, then this same poverty and conflicts are used to maintain the system and hold onto power. In this way, the desperate situation of the poor is often used against them, where they are willing to give up rights and freedoms in the promise of a better life. Unfortunately, the exchange is never equal and is rigged in the politician's favour.
Socialism is created and maintained by the poor and powerless, with violence and lies used to control and use the poor. All examples of Socialism have the same outcome being the peoples lives getting worse.
The poorest and most desperate people believe the lie of equality just to have an even more unequal society than ever before. With the political elite controlling and owning all the means of production and the people having no say in anything.
The poor deserve better, the poor deserve protection and help to prevent their freedoms from being traded for lies.
The poor should strive for more freedoms and rights not less, and given the power and freedom to improve their own lives and to rely less on the state to save them.
Nobody knows what is better for you than you.