What is Socialism?

In essence, Capitalism is economic freedom, the “hands-off, free-for-all of the free/open economy, while socialism (the economics of socialism is “the state-run or Command Economy) is universal conscription (slavery) to the state.

Socialism holds to the view that all productivity, all prosperity is communally created and that, given our base human natures, wherein those who initially control the capital and own the businesses, banks and mines will always keep a much larger share of the wealth for themselves, thereby depriving their co-creators of “their fair share,” and that only an independent and distinct third party, such as government, can be trusted to step in and make sure that the communally created wealth is more evenly/"fairly" distributed.

Politically, that credo has rarely been expressed more articulately than this;

"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." - Adolf Hitler

(Speech of May 1, 1927)

That quote is the essence of Socialism/Nazism (National Socialism). The mass murder committed by the Third Reich, while not a primary condition of socialism, IS a NECESSARY condition for socialism. That is borne out by the fact that Mao’s China and Stalin’s USSR both far outpaced Nazi Germany in the scope and breadth of their mass murder.

In 1938 Time Magazine named Adolph Hitler "Man of the Year" and in that article about him, they noted Hitler's anti-capitalistic economic policies:

"Most cruel joke of all, however, has been played by Hitler & Co. on those German capitalists and small businessmen who once backed National Socialism as a means of saving Germany's bourgeois economic structure from radicalism. The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state also applies to business. Some businesses have been confiscated outright, on other what amounts to a capital tax has been levied. Profits have been strictly controlled. Some idea of the increasing Governmental control and interference in business could be deduced from the fact that 80% of all building and 50% of all industrial orders in Germany originated last year with the Government. Hard-pressed for food- stuffs as well as funds, the Nazi regime has taken over large estates and in many instances collectivized agriculture, a procedure fundamentally similar to Russian Communism."

(Source: Time Magazine; January 2, 1939)

There are two misguided arguments used to advance socialism today; the FIRST is based on the “Zero Sum Game,” or “Fixed Economic Pie,” which erroneously claims that “There is only so much wealth to go around, so if Person A creates a new product or business, his good fortune will inevitably have to result in the misfortune of countless others." The FACT is, we don’t have a “fixed economic pie,” or “only a certain amount of available wealth,” ALL economies are dynamic, NOT static, so when person A creates a new product or business that not only creates more wealth for A, but creates exponentially greater opportunities for others, as well and the overall wealth in the economy expands.

The SECOND is rooted in a combination of fear and a maliciously debased view of our fellow man, which goes that, “Most people simply aren’t shrewd, savvy businessmen and investors, singularly focused on money and that in a completely free society (economically free, primarily) the average person would ultimately find themselves at the mercy of such ruthless, hard-hearted financiers.” That is so outrageously mindless and wrong-headed that it can’t be taken seriously, but it IS taken seriously be too many mis-educated people!

A cursory look at the biographies of all the world’s greatest achievers will show that nearly all of them came from humble beginnings, many of them extremely humble indeed. These people weren’t outmatched or outclassed by their better educated and more well-off rivals in business and neither where workers! When the economy expands jobs are more plentiful, wages rise as employers compete for the services of more competent and reliable workers and that is the essence of prosperity!