1373. Are Communism and Socialism Really All That Bad? By Mark J. Stoddard · January 6, 2022, in Meridian Magazine

 This presents Communism and Socialism in reality!

Are Communism and Socialism Really All That Bad?

By Mark J. Stoddard · January 6, 2022

(Maurine and Scot Proctor are joining the Stoddard’s Heart of Russia Cruise August 20, 2022 and hope you’ll be with us. We’ve nearly filled the ship! The Proctors will be giving their presentations to not only our American friends, but to the many Latter-day Saint Russians and other Russians cruising with us. We’ll see all of the great sites of Russia like the Hermitage Gallery, Red Square and the Kremlin, hear Mikhail Gorbachev speak to our group, and get to know many Russian Latter-day Saints.  Call Liz Stoddard at 801-669-1777 for more information or go to this website at www.HeartOfRussiaCruises.com/Meridian )

Occam, a 14^th century English cleric used a philosophy with such cutting precision that it became known as Occam’s “razor,” namely “give precedence to simplicity: of two competing theories, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred.”

Explanations for seemingly complex matters, such political/economic organizations can indeed be simple. I appreciate simple so before tackling today’s incarnation of Karl Marx, first consider a result of the Marxian reality: 

Visiting the #1 Soviet Pediatric Hospital

While visiting the leading pediatric hospital in the USSR/Soviet Union in February 1991, the chief of the hospital saw the many large dish pack boxes of gifts for new mothers Americans sent with us. He was appreciative of the diapers, ones-ies, receiving blankets for the babies and very nice gowns for the Soviet mothers. Then he spied the box filled with medications. He asked, “I know you’ve heard of hospitals here selling the aspirin on the black market and will understand if you tell me no, but would you trust me to distribute these medications to the mothers and children who need them?” I agreed.

That summer, he came to our ship filled with Americans and our invited Soviet Russian guests for our 13-day cruise. He asked if he could address the group that night at our entertainment concert. He was our honored guest and I gladly included him. I quickly became embarrassed by him.

“I wish to thank Mr. Markem Stoddardem for saving the life of a young girl.” I turned red as St. Basils. What was this about?? “You see, a few months ago a 10-year-old girl fell from a 3rd story balcony. She was rushed to our hospital where we did all we could to save her. But her temperature was so high, and we had nothing that could bring it down. Then I remembered Mr. Stoddard’s box of medications and rushed to find what I needed. Yes, in a short time this girl’s fever broke. You saved her life.”

Confused I asked him, “The medications we brought were all over-the-counter medications. Which one helped her? And thank these people. They were the ones that sent the donations.”

“Yes, I thank you all. The medication was Children’s Liquid Tylenol. We can’t get that here.”

Think about that. The #1 hospital in all the Soviet Union for children didn’t have access to Children’s Liquid Tylenol and had to sell donated aspirin on the black market to make ends meet. The USSR was the embodiment of socialism and its totalitarian extension, communism. 

From Venezuela to Cuba to China

Venezuela once boasted an enormous oil surplus and made a fortune from it. The socialists envied the money made by those who worked for it and nationalized the oil industry. Today the country is starving with oil shortages. Reminds me of what I told the Soviets on my lecture tour in 1991. “If Lenin had been born in Saudi Arabia there would be a sand shortage.”

Sadly, I visited Cuba at the invitation of the government several times to lecture on how people could start businesses. It didn’t go well. All the students were too nervous to discuss anything, and the state police were everywhere. Poverty was rampant. At a cigar factory I visited, people made handmade cigars while the politically correct official read aloud the day’s newspaper. Yes, they have literacy now, but as the first black millionaire in America in the early 1900’s said, “It’s not what you know that will hurt you. Just what you know that just ain’t so.”

My friend, Eldridge Cleaver, the famed founder of the radical Black Panthers, escaped America to the Cuban socialist heaven. After six months, he begged US authorities to let him come home. (Later he was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But that’s another story for another article.)

Socialism, simply put, is the public ownership of the means of production. So said Karl Marx. He didn’t much care about degrees of socialism but only found total ownership by the state of the means of production to be acceptable. Communism and socialism are simply degrees of the poisonous fruit — distinctions without much difference. 

Fascism is simply State Socialism where the state decides if someone will be allowed to have private ownership. Obviously, that was Germany and Italy in the 30’s and 40’s. AND…it is China today. China is no longer a communist country but a totalitarian Fascist state. The means of production are often companies that are, at best, 45% state owned and the rest owned by American and European capitalist corporations. China tried communal or collective farms, aka, state owned farms. The people starved. China had to dump that socialist dream. In the 1990’s I visited a dirt road village outside of the Hong Kong territories called Shenzen. It was designated by the “communist” government to be a free-enterprise zone. On our cruise on the Yangtze we had several new entrepreneurs from Shenzen. They were nervous about China’s commitment to capitalism but thrilled to be allowed to develop their companies. Today, Shenzen rivals Singapore for the most shining skyscrapers. So many privately owned companies.

Morality. In all forms of socialism, the state eventually mandates or dictates moral choices and behaviors. It decides what is moral and what is not, and what is politically correct. You don’t.

Capitalism is an amoral private financing and ownership of enterprises. Amoral because it is economics, not a system of morality. Ironically, capitalism best exists with moral people. No one invests in people they can’t trust.

Nationalizing England

It is best to show how these “isms” affect the lives of real people who lived in countries that embraced these “isms.” Anecdotes prove little but they bring to life realities.

As a teenager living in England in the 1960’s while my father was stationed there as a USAF officer, I saw firsthand the transition from the mildly socialist governments of Churchill England and prime minister Harold Wilson’s strong push to nationalize most industries.

Our little branch had a couple of teens my age and I became good friends with David Cullen. One evening at our home, he doubled over in pain. I knew enough to check his lower right abdominal area for rebound pain. Severe. We took him to the emergency room where they confirmed he had acute appendicitis.  My mother asked how long the surgery would take but was told “we have no beds available. Bring him back in 3 weeks. We’ll give him some antibiotics that should help him.” Welcome to nationalized health. 

This is reminiscent of what happened to Canadian hospitals in December 1993, much to the chagrin of 1st Lady Hillary Clinton who had been proposing her own step toward nationalizing health care. While predicting only rosy things for such government health care, Canada closed all hospitals except for extreme emergencies due to a shortfall of money. That took the steam out of Hillary Clinton’s efforts.

In 1991, I had dinner with a member of the Soviet Politburo — the governing communist organization. He brought up the wonders of Soviet medicine and how it was superior to American medicine and how inhumane it was to treat people the way we did by charging them for health treatments. I let it go to avoid a conflict and changed the subject to a TV show on medicine that I was on in Houston, Texas. He jumped on that.

“I’ve been to Houston. Very nice city…” Then he told me all the things he had done there. 

“Why were you in Houston?” I asked.

“Oh, I had heart surgery. They are the best.” Did I just hear Marx cringe?

My friends in Windsor and Calgary often tell me how impossible it is to get good surgeries in Canada and always go to the USA for their surgeries. Canadian health care is great, they say, for treating broken bones, and illnesses, but the waits are impossible for surgeries. They were shocked when they found out my hip surgery, at age 65, took place a matter of a few weeks after x-rays showed the left hip socket was bone on bone. My Canadian friends report that at my age in Canada, the surgery may not even be allowed. If allowed, the wait could be a year or more.

When we first went to the USSR, to celebrate us becoming the first Soviet approved private American cruise company, we wanted to buy mink hats. None fit. Why? Standard deviations dictated by the state didn’t make products for big-headed Americans.

We also found out only four or five colors of paint were produced by the USSR paint factories. One was not allowed to mix them lest it vary from approved colors. Another version of a woke culture promoting socialism.

Russia After Communism

Today, Moscow looks very little like the nearly empty street affair in 1990 where I was first invited to teach 17 supreme soviets, city councils, Yeltsin’s council of ministers (cabinet), and a prime minister or two how to move to a free market economy. They were clamoring to know how to get out of the socialist morass. 

They’ve done ok with fits and starts when many of the state industries were made private but in the hands of the soviet leaders to feather their own nests. But freedom has a way of getting out. It’s contagious. Mafia groups were formed for their own gain — and we had to contend with them when we first started holding cruises in the USSR and especially in the new Russia. Those gangs have been dramatically eliminated by the power of private ownership and the colossal new economy. Stores are full. When we first went there, a shoe store might have 10 pairs of shoes. Grocery stores were pathetic. Not today.

And it is far cleaner. Downside is traffic is often terrible. Car ownership has skyrocketed with increased disposable income. 

The USSR was the perpetual model of wonder for socialism from 1920 to 1990 — 70 years of socialist rule. It led to the deaths of tens of millions who would not obey the mandates. Services were terrible. In 1990 there were only 4 outbound international phone lines. To call the USA, I had to book a call for the next day, go to the post office and wait for my line to open, sometimes a wait of 3 or 4 hours.

When Mr. Gorbachev comes on our cruise ship in Russia August 20, 2022, you can ask him yourself. His translator and confidant Pavel Pahlazhenko will be on the entire cruise. They don’t mince words.

Again, anecdotal evidence is not proof, but it does capture the essence.  The realities of socialism are as follows:

1. Communism and socialism have been widely tried and resoundingly failed people.
2. Communism cannot succeed. It will always implode, exactly as it did in the USSR and elsewhere. Once public ownership is dictated, either by a single dictator or a compliant public, the decision must be made whether compliance by 100% of the population is voluntary or compulsory. If it is voluntary, free markets will create an economy that make implementing state ownership impossible. Communism is only possible if it is compulsory. Dictatorship of the proletariat. 
3. People always work best from their own self-interest. In the USSR the apartment buildings are owned by the state, but the apartment living quarters are “owned” or maintained by individuals. It’s in their best interest to make their homes clean, comfortable and decorated to their style. Outside of their apartments, the hallways and elevators are state owned. Light bulbs were usually missing or out, elevators rarely worked, urine smells dominated, and trash was everywhere. When everyone owns it, no one takes care of it. “That’s the government’s job.” 
4. Charity did not exist in the USSR and is an anathema in a socialist state. People did help neighbors, but beyond that, charitable needs had to be taken care of by the state. Voluntary donations did not exist. Soviets were astounded to find out that in the USA hundreds of billions of dollars were donated in cash and voluntary labor to thousands of charities that did great work. Religions did so much to feed and clothe the poor.
5. When freedom begins to come into the light of day in a country, the toothpaste is out of the tube and can’t be put back except through military force. Once it’s out, things begin to change rapidly.

One last note. Don’t look to Sweden as THE socialist paradise now. They have rejected the high tax, low service model of socialism and are constantly privatizing every industry possible. It takes time to overturn foolishness, but they are doing great things. New Zealand once had mostly publicly owned industries, but by 1995 had privatized nearly every business, including public transportation. In doing so, their dollar strengthened, people’s wealth grew.

Freedom is key. Without that we do not have free agency. Without that, what’s the point?