Tag: communism

South African policymakers learn all the wrong lessons from other countries. Rather than look to the free and prosperous societies of the United States and Europe, politicians and pundits would rather push us to imitate Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba and Zimbabwe. And even when policymakers identify genuinely good role models, they take the wrong lessons.

For us liberals, it matters little who makes a million dollars every other day, or how the world’s most endowed billionaires spend their wealth. As long as legitimate effort is exerted in an environment of free market competition; where entrepreneurship is recognised and rewarded on the basis of good business ethics and hard honest work.

South Africa’s economy is in a mess, to say the very least, and all this is solely and exclusively the fault of policymakers. Everything has gone horribly wrong! Yet it is not all beyond redemption.

2021 will mark the centenary of the foundation of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and today’s South African Communist Party (SACP) will be extremely fortunate to have the milestone marked by a scholarly work of this calibre.

In markets there is inequality of wealth because there is inequality of production. Some people produce more than other people. Not all labour is equally valuable. Structural inequality relies on politics. The state may put roadblocks in front of some people in order to benefit others. This sort of economic inequality relies more on political pull than on productivity.

The almost simultaneous implosion of socialist and communist systems throughout the world is arguably the single most significant political event of the twentieth century. The year 1989 is particularly poignant because in that year the Berlin Wall was dismantled.  This event signalled the beginning of the end of socialism in Europe and hastened an already growing worldwide disillusionment with socialist ideology.

The heart of socialism is the class system. Whether it is Julius Malema or Vladimir Lenin or Fidel Castro or your Professor of Sociology, all socialists believe they belong to a superior class entitled to rule the inferior classes.