To dominate a nation without resistance, it is enough to suppress economic freedoms, which is always the case when the state dominates the citizens’ money. Emmanuel Rincón, editor-at-large at El American, dedicates the eleventh issue of Culture War to analyzing the virus of socialism and its preferred economic weapon: redistribution of wealth.
Without going too far, Emmanuel simplifies in a few words the contemporary meaning of socialism: “It is any effort by the State to intervene in private activity for the purpose of manipulating and managing a nation’s resources as it pleases” with the ultimate goal of redistributing wealth. He adds that, with the State intervening in the finances of citizens, “there is no resistance that will be worth the moment they try to crush them.”
Socialism and its deadly virus mutations
Marxist ideology, which Emmanuel compares to a “deadly virus” that constantly mutates to perfect its methods and kill the carrier more effectively, has evolved since its initial conception to survive the advance of time:
“Despite the antibodies generated against the lies emanating from its promoters, the virus has managed to recompose itself again and again to mutate and become ever more efficient in its destructive end.”
Emmanuel Rincón
He tells us that “Marx’s historic postulates, in which the state was to seize the means of production in order to achieve the utopian perfect and egalitarian society, have become twisted, since constant failures have required it to innovate in order to stand on its own feet.”
High taxes and heavy regulations empower governments to continue to control the economic power of nations, individual liberties and the efficiency of enterprises under their partial command. “For all these reasons, it is necessary to explain the new socialism and what its ends are,” he says.
Good and bad examples of socialism
“Nowadays, when you try to have a conversation with an average American, Bernie Sanders supporter — or even with any uninformed Democrat about the latest actors’ attempts to destroy freedoms in the United States — it is common to encounter the typical empty and uninformed argument of supposed Nordic socialism,” Emmanuel explains to us. “The one that millions of Americans are drooling over today.”
While it is true that the Nordic countries have flirted for years with social democratic models, every time the presence of the state and taxes increase, their economic indices plummet and they release the economy again. “After recovering, they stupidly perform the same procedure.”
Despite high taxation, the Nordic economies are the freest in the world, and the easiest to do business with. “There are few regulations and state intervention”, so they still have an efficient productive apparatus, despite the range of social programs.
Socialism in the Americas
A good example of this that Emmanuel tells us about is the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, which owes its resounding failure to the regulations imposed by the Chavistas on the private sector, as well as the economic catastrophe in Venezuela, beyond the famous cries of “expropriate!” of the late tyrant Hugo Chavez, something that is not usually discussed.
At present, countries, such as Argentina and even the United States, have implemented taxes and regulations that make economic growth impossible and promote the absolute dependence of citizens on the State: “for every $100 earned by an Argentinean businessman, he must pay $106 to the State”.
The case of the new Democratic administration in the United States, led by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, wants to increase taxes drastically and is printing tons of money “as if they were monopoly bills”, which has generated an inflationary process not seen since the economic crisis of 2008.
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