Defending socialism is necessarily defending institutionalized aggression against innocents.
Socialism is a nefarious and violent system that arbitrarily destroys, tyrannizes, and subjugates society under an omnipotent state, sustained by a political project aiming to enslave human beings, leaving them in a position of total subjugation to a despotic, tyrannical, and collectivist autocracy. In such a regime, individuals are entirely stripped of their rights of choice, individuality, autonomy, and productive capacity, and their property can be confiscated in the name of the “common good” and “social justice.” Due to its inherently despotic, totalitarian, and impersonal organizational chart, socialism completely disregards the individual—even dissociating them from their human condition—considering them simply as a tool that must serve the designs of the party and the central planners in power. It is something extremely cold, impersonal, autocratic, and malevolent, manifestly incorporating and expressing the elemental mechanism of state bureaucracy in its most truculent and authoritarian form.
Despite all historical socialist experiences having ruined the countries that fell victim to this system, socialism’s adherents continue to promote and spread the doctrine as if it had never been genuinely applied, which is a fallacy as immoral as it is disconcerting, although this is not unexpected from socialists. In other words, besides not caring about promoting an inhumane, aggressive, and degrading political philosophy—which was responsible for the greatest massacres and atrocities in human history—militants are entirely willing to ignore all historical socialist experiences to realize their utopia, even though empirical evidence emphatically shows they will produce the same results as previous experiences. Albert Einstein once said a very interesting phrase, which is entirely appropriate for this situation: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Socialism is a system that, above all, is based on a beastly economic irrationality and a profound ignorance of human nature. Besides ignoring the most elementary economic laws, socialism persists in ignoring human nature itself, with all its beauties, contrasts, and incongruities. By ignoring human nature, socialism implicitly shows it does not wish to serve or meet the needs of individuals. Its objective is to meet the projects of the bureaucrats and central planners in power, who, in turn, have an idealized vision of how they think socialism should be. From these prerogatives, the idealizers of the utopian society will start organizing it according to their ideology, literally transitioning from theory to executing their pretensions and objectives in practice.
Here we see the monumental level of arrogance and hubris of those in power, thinking they have the right to alter lives, economic systems, the orthodoxy of the natural order, and entire societies to make their country compatible with their political fantasy. As P. J. O'Rourke wrote, “What sort of totalitarian mind-set does it take to determine everyone’s abilities and needs?” In other words, human nature and individuals’ most elementary needs must be entirely ignored to attempt to build the utopia. By ignoring individuals in the name of the collective to try to produce the “perfect society”—what socialism ends up doing is using excessively cruel, terrifying, and ruthless measures to hide its imperfections—the result will invariably be a despotic, imperative, autocratic, and centralizing government, which will become the catalyst for an unutterable level of atrocities, suffering, cruelty, hostility, and systematic aggression executed against innocent people.
It is evident that the utopia will fail, as it did in all historical socialist experiences. It is impossible for a society to achieve success and prosperity when individuals—by state decree—are prohibited from acting as human beings and doing what humans do when they are left free to act according to their nature and disposition, whether good or bad. Consequently, in such an environment, two scenarios, which are very common in socialist dictatorships like Cuba and North Korea, will emerge.
In these countries, whose societies are suffocated by totalitarian regimes, many people engage in free trade in the black market—allowing many of them to escape misery, poverty, and sometimes total starvation—and due to the scarcity that the absence of economic freedom causes in the formal market, the regime invariably becomes so corrupt that many individuals can obtain some advantages and benefits by bribing the right people.
Due to scarcity and precariousness, state officials, usually those at lower levels, will always be willing to turn a blind eye to certain offenses in exchange for money. In North Korea, for example, common soldiers often go hungry and frequently accept bribes to buy food, as the daily ration they receive from the government—not only is it not nutritious—it is nowhere near sufficient for an adult man. The inherent precariousness of a socialist system, abundant among low-ranking individuals, contributes to the regime becoming invariably corrupt. At this point, corruption is fundamental for citizens to gain some freedom and prosperity. Both sides, the authority who turns a blind eye and receives money, and the person who buys the favor, benefit.
In other words, these scenarios—where there is a broad and diverse, yet illegal black market, with many products, especially food, being smuggled—develop and are recurrent in socialist regimes because, just like in capitalism, people will continue to make exchanges for money, simply because they will have needs and feel compelled to satisfy them. This is part of human nature. This is how things will be, whether you live in a republic, a monarchy, a liberal capitalist regime, a communist dictatorship, or an ultra-progressive social democracy. Human beings make exchanges for money to satisfy their needs, from the most basic (like food) to the most trivial and frivolous (like entertainment). Since socialism systematically ignores human nature, theorists, militants, and central planners, being naturally obtuse, will often be incapable of seeing beyond their pet utopia to perceive the real conditions of scarcity and precariousness that compel common citizens to satisfy their needs and act as human beings, driven by the intrinsic compulsion of their inherent nature.
Socialists are so obtuse regarding human nature that they forget it is impossible to convert people into submissive and obedient automatons by state decree. Individuals will continue to be fully guided by needs intrinsic to human nature and will do whatever is necessary to satisfy them and survive. The vast majority of people enslaved by totalitarian regimes merely appear to be fully obedient to the regime to avoid problems with the dictatorship.
Another fundamental point that socialism—in its arrogance and hubris—persists in making is categorically refusing to see the world from the perspective of the common citizen, who works hard to support themselves and their family and does not care at all about books, political theory, Marxism, and similar trivialities. The common individual, who is the vast majority in society, does not care at all about books or ideologies because they rarely speak to their reality and do not present quick and specific solutions to the problems they face. All they want is to work, earn their money to meet their needs, and improve their standard of living. If the government is not willing to help, at least it should not hinder them.
When they acquire some knowledge about socialism, due to some event, like severe political crises with catastrophic socioeconomic consequences, the common citizen, when they decide to get information on the subject, becomes a vigorous opponent of this system because they understand that socialism is about promoting restrictions and not about promoting freedom. When they understand that socialism is about promoting an immense level of restrictions—the kind that will negatively affect them and can even severely hinder their existence—the common citizen becomes a vigorous opponent of socialism.
Although some are deceived by the fallacious mantra that socialism stands with the poor and the disadvantaged, which is a statement at least hilarious, the common citizen—at least those with a reasonable level of intelligence—can see that in socialism everything will depend on a political elite, and usually only they will enjoy full comfort, abundance, and material prosperity. The rest of the population will be widely harmed and impoverished by the system, precisely to support those in power.
Even though they are not great specialists on the subject, the common citizen reads articles about what happens in Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela and does not want that for themselves and their family. Realizing that their standard and quality of life will be widely harmed by socialism, the common citizen vigorously opposes this system, equally rejecting the fanciful discourse that the “real socialism has never been applied.”
Despite all the destruction caused by socialism during the 20th century, this deadly, bloodthirsty, violent, oppressive, and genocidal doctrine—the most efficient extermination machine conceived in human history—continues to be widely spread and has been gathering adherents worldwide; mostly, young rich people from the elite or upper-middle class, university students, militants, aspiring politicians, and progressive sympathizers. The vast majority of the doctrine’s adherents are people completely obtuse and radically ignorant about historical socialist experiences and the unutterable atrocities committed by these regimes. These people usually have a lot of free time; therefore, they can afford to waste it reading mundane books on socialist theory. This also explains why the poor are rarely socialists. As they need to work and support themselves, they are people who usually do not have much free time. The little free time they have, they spend with family, practicing sports, or engaging in other wholesome activities. This is one of the reasons why socialism has long since become mainly a pastime for the rich and a fetish of the aristocracy and the artistic, academic, and financial elites. Unlike the poor, who need to work daily and fight hard for their survival, the elites have a lot of free time to indulge in the ideological fetishes of socialist theory.
Due to the fact that unanimity is impossible regarding this system, a significant portion of society will categorically reject socialism and resist its implementation. Therefore, for socialism to exist and be implemented, it will necessarily have to attack others, violate and confiscate their properties, and be
immensely cruel, dictatorial, aggressive, and truculent. Socialism can only be applied through wide and systematic violence against innocents, as it will attack precisely those who, being mentally lucid and cognitively honest, categorically refuse to accept its implementation. Thus, socialism will necessarily violate people’s right to property, their freedom of choice, freedom of speech, and every fundamental right that the regime considers necessary to censor and suppress in order to achieve its nefarious political goals. By doing so, it is impossible to apply socialism without this generating and producing systematic violence and producing generalized aggression against innocents. Even if socialism promises that there will be no violence, at some point, it will always have to systematically attack the fundamental rights of innocent people. As Hayek wrote: “It is because they are bound to achieve the opposite of the objectives which they invoke that the socialists of all parties, by the logic of their ideas, are driven to suppress freedom.”
It is precisely because of this that defending socialism is necessarily defending systematic and institutionalized aggression against innocents. We must urgently and vehemently oppose the proliferation of this totalitarian, tyrannical, violent, and bloodthirsty doctrine that promotes systematic violence and an unutterable level of atrocities against innocent people. For this, it is necessary to study the historical experiences of socialism and its catastrophic consequences for the countries that fell victim to this deadly political system.
